Soumitra Dastidar is based in Kolkata and has been a documentary film maker for the last 15 years. He has a Master’s in Political Science and started his career as a journalist. Later on, he switched into making documentary films and worked closely with Catherine Berge, a renowned French documentary filmmaker, while she was making Gaach (The Tree, 1998) on the life of the colossal figure of Bengal cinema, Soumitra Chatterjee. The film was produced by Nayeem Hafizka and Ismail Merchant.

Soumitra’s path- breaking documentary was Nothing Official (2002), when he went to Gujarat to document the pogrom unleashed by Hindutva brigade risking his life. He again went to Gujarat in 2003 to see the aftermath and made Genocide and After (2003). These two films brought accolades galore. In 2005, Soumitra made A Letter to My Daughter on the state repression in Manipur, which was critically acclaimed in India and abroad. After making some thought provoking documentaries on ecological issues like Story of a Golden River and India Mortgaged, he made another path-breaking documentary Musalmaner Kotha (Story of Muslims) in 2013. Soumitra has won numerous awards from India and abroad. His films have been shown in many universities across the country.Soumitra Dastidar is a popular filmmaker of India keeping ‘people’ at the centre of all his documentaries.