Gujarati films are assembled by committee. Four banners in the studio field, eight names in the producer field, and a director hired somewhere near the end of the process. Vijaygiri Bava has spent a decade running the opposite experiment. Born on 24 March 1987 in Chansol, a village near Kheralu, and educated at L. D. Arts College in Ahmedabad, he directs, he writes, he cuts, and since 2024 he produces, frequently all on the same picture. His debut took ten Gujarat State Awards. His fourth feature needed a set built across 16 acres and eight people willing to sign for it. The argument for him is not that he makes good films, which is arguable. It is that his name appears in more credit blocks per film than anyone else working in the language, and that concentration is visible on screen.
The arc
01A first film that swept the state
Premji: Rise of a Warrior released on 10 July 2015. Bava directed it and wrote it with Gireesh Parmar, and Twinkle Vijaygiri produced it under Vijaygiri Films. The cast was mostly Gujarati theatre actors, Happy Bhavsar, Mehul Solanki, Namrata Pathak and Maulik Nayak, with the Hindi actor Abhimanyu Singh alongside them. It was shot across more than twenty locations in Ahmedabad, Diu and Kutch in twenty five days.
It received ten Gujarat State Awards for 2015, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor for Mehul Solanki, and Best Story and Screenplay. A re-edited version opened in Mumbai on 31 March 2017 and went back into Gujarat cinemas. Ten state awards on a debut is not a career start most people get to build on, and it bought him the only thing that matters to a first time filmmaker, which is a second film.
02The writer he keeps going back to
In 2018 he directed a short film called Mahotu, written by Raam Mori, whose first short story collection of that name had just won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2017. That short is the hinge in his filmography. Montu Ni Bittu followed on 23 August 2019, written by Prarthi Dholakia and Raam Mori, with Bava sharing the screenplay credit. Maulik Nayak and Aarohi Patel led it and it ran 133 minutes.
21mu Tiffin came on 10 December 2021, adapted from the Raam Mori story of the same name, with Bava on direction, screenplay and editing. Three consecutive projects with the same writer, and by the third one Bava is doing three jobs on the film himself. This is the point where his career stops being a director's career and starts being an authorship.
03Prizes from people who do not fund him
The awards on his shelf come mostly from juries rather than from the box office, which is a fact worth stating plainly rather than dressing up. Premji brought him the Transmedia Screen and Stage Award for best dialogue on top of the state awards. Montu Ni Bittu won him Best Director at the 19th Transmedia Gujarati Screen and Stage Awards and the 2019 GIFA award for Best Director.
21mu Tiffin travelled the furthest. It was selected for the Indian Panorama at the 52nd International Film Festival of India in November 2021 and competed there for the ICFT UNESCO Gandhi Medal, was declared a winner at the WRPN Women's International Film Festival, and was selected for the Toronto International Women Film Festival and the 16th Tasveer South Asian Film Festival. A 128 minute Gujarati drama about a woman running a tiffin service did that. No star, no franchise, no marketing budget worth the name.
04The film that needed eight signatures
Kasoombo released on 16 February 2024 in Gujarati and on 3 May 2024 in a Hindi version across India. Bava directed it, wrote it with Raam Mori, cut it with Ashish Oza and Kanu Prajapati, and for the first time in his career took a producer credit. It is adapted from Vimalkumar Dhami's novel Amar Balidan and set during Alauddin Khalji's invasion of Gujarat, following a village chief and a small band of warriors defending the Palitana Jain temples on Shatrunjaya hill. It ran 156 minutes on a reported Rs 15 crore budget.
Getting it made took eight producers and four production companies, Vijaygiri FilmOs with Ananta Businesscorp, Patel Processing and Big Box Series. That is the irony sitting at the centre of this page. The most personally authored film in modern Gujarati cinema is also the one that needed the largest committee to exist, and Bava's response was to add his own name to the committee rather than hand the film to it.
The work that matters
Not the epic and not the award sweeping debut. A 128 minute drama about a woman and her lunch boxes, which he directed, co-wrote and co-edited, and which went to the Indian Panorama at the 52nd IFFI. It is the smallest film on his record and the proof that the authorship is not a function of budget.
Ten Gujarat State Awards for a first time director shooting in twenty five days with theatre actors. Whatever you think of the film, that result is what bought him a career at a moment when Gujarati cinema had almost no track record to lend anyone.
The only Gujarati period film to get a nationwide Hindi release, and the only film on which Bava holds four credits at once. It is also where the economics stop being flattering, since a reported Rs 15 crore budget is a very large number in this language.
Verified credits
| Year | Film | Director | Writing credit | Editor | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Premji: Rise of a Warrior | Yes | Story, screenplay, dialogue | No | No |
| 2018 | Mahotu (short film) | Yes | No, written by Raam Mori | No | No |
| 2019 | Montu Ni Bittu | Yes | Screenplay | No | No |
| 2021 | 21mu Tiffin | Yes | Screenplay | Yes, with Alok Mehta | No |
| 2021 | Riverfront Stories, one episode | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| 2024 | Kasoombo | Yes | Story and screenplay, with Raam Mori | Yes, with two others | Yes, one of eight |
The numbers
How many credit blocks Vijaygiri Bava holds on his own films
Counted from the direction, writing, editing and production fields of each film's English Wikipedia infobox. Shared credits count once, so his co-editor and co-writer credits are included on the same basis as sole ones. It measures how many jobs he took, not how well he did them.
Questions people ask
Which films has Vijaygiri Bava directed?
Four features: Premji: Rise of a Warrior (2015), Montu Ni Bittu (2019), 21mu Tiffin (2021) and Kasoombo (2024). He also directed the short film Mahotu in 2018, written by Raam Mori, and an episode of the series Riverfront Stories in 2021, on which he was also a producer.
How many awards did Premji: Rise of a Warrior win?
Ten Gujarat State Awards for 2015, including Best Film, Best Director for Bava, Best Actor for Mehul Solanki, and Best Story and Screenplay. Bava also received the Transmedia Screen and Stage Award for best dialogue for the film.
Is Vijaygiri Bava a producer as well as a director?
He took his first producer credit in 2024, on Kasoombo, nine years after his debut. Until then his films were produced by Twinkle Vijaygiri under the banner Vijaygiri FilmOs. He also carries a producer credit on his 2021 Riverfront Stories episode.
What is Kasoombo about?
It is adapted from Vimalkumar Dhami's novel Amar Balidan and set during Alauddin Khalji's invasion of Gujarat. Dadu Barot, a local chief of the village of Adipur, leads a small band of warriors defending the Palitana Jain temples on Shatrunjaya hill. It released on 16 February 2024 in Gujarati and on 3 May 2024 in a Hindi version, and ran 156 minutes on a reported Rs 15 crore budget.
Who writes Vijaygiri Bava's films?
Most of them come through Raam Mori, the Gujarati short story writer whose debut collection Mahotu won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2017. Mori wrote Bava's 2018 short film, co-wrote Montu Ni Bittu with Prarthi Dholakia, supplied the source story for 21mu Tiffin, and co-wrote Kasoombo with Bava.
Sources
Career facts verified against published biographies and an IMDb-sourced Gujarati credits database. Photographs are free-licensed Wikimedia Commons files, reused with the attribution each licence requires. Nothing on this page is estimated.
- English Wikipedia biography of Vijaygiri Bava, retrieved July 2026
- English Wikipedia film articles for Premji: Rise of a Warrior, Montu Ni Bittu, 21mu Tiffin and Kasoombo, retrieved July 2026
- English Wikipedia biography of Raam Mori for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2017
- The Footage: Reflection of Gujarati Cinema, interview with Vijaygiri Bava, 1 November 2019, as cited in his biography
- Wikimedia Commons file metadata for licence and photographer attribution, retrieved July 2026