Abhay Kumar

Abhay Kumar is a double National Award-winning filmmaker and visual artist from India. His feature documentary ‘Placebo’ was released worldwide on Netflix in 2016 and won the National Award for Best Investigative Film 2017. He edited and produced ‘About Love’ which won the Best Debut award at Sheffield DocFest, 2019, and went on to secure distribution through POV in North America and was acquired by Mubi for worldwide release in 2021.
Abhay is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talents 2016 and 2021. Across documentary and fiction, his works have screened at IFFR, Tribeca Film Festival, IDFA, Hotdocs, and the Centre Pompidou Museum. In 2019, Abhay relocated to Amsterdam to pursue a Masters Degree in Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy from where he graduated Cum Laude in 2021.

Abhay’s work aims to make visible power structures that limit imaginaries. He works within the frameworks of speculative science fiction and the fantastical. In the Netherlands, his work is supported by Netherlands Filmfonds and the Amsterdam Fund For Kunst (AFK).

Research within de Vrijplaats
During the Vrijplaats Residency Abhay investigated ‘who gets access to hedonism and in which conditions’ for his is science fiction dance short film ‘The Room’.