In a sunlit studio in Queens last Saturday, where stray shafts of midday light sifted through industrial windows, Ankit Poudel—Nepal’s quietly celebrated auteur—began guiding a dozen aspiring filmmakers through the alchemy of storytelling on screen. It wasn’t about gear or software; it was about seeing—about learning to notice the breath between lines of dialogue, the silent hum in a room before a cut.
The workshop unfolded gently. Ankit invited students to dissect scenes from his own short films. They traced the quiet tension in a grandmother’s lingering gaze, explored how frame composition can echo emotional undercurrents, and refined the most deceptively simple instruction any director gives: “Roll camera.” Through each layered example, the class began to perceive the director’s true work—not to direct, as in boss, but to evoke.
Ankit’s tone was spare, almost meditative. He urged participants to treat every shot as a poem: “You’re not just capturing an image—you’re capturing what you feel behind it.” When one student asked how to balance personal vision with collaboration, Ankit smiled, recalling his own beginnings beneath the Himalayan sky. He spoke of the necessity of humility—how the camera, the editor, the sound mixer, each bring their own voice, creating a chorus rather than a solo.
By the workshop’s end, they’d staged a silent two-character scene using only natural light and ambient sound. The result was simple yet profound: a moment of human connection wordlessly outlined. It was the kind of teaching that sees beyond technique and plants one’s own roots into the practice of cinematic presence.
When participants stepped outside, the urban lull of New York felt different—brighter, quieter, richer. Ankit lingered to share coffee and reflect on process, reminding each filmmaker that the real fieldwork begins when the workshop ends.
