ONA Magazine | Bharat Nalluri (ON 78-83)

FROM EARLY EXPERIMENTS BEHIND THE CAMERA TO A SUCCESSFULY CAREER IN FILM AND TV, DIRECTOR BHARAT NALLURI (ON 78-83) SHARES HOW HIS OWN STORY BEGAN IN A GALAXY NOT SO FAY AWAY. 

Read an excerpt of  Paul Bajoria's ONA feature below: 

In the summer of 1977, a 12-year-old boy sat in a darkened cinema, eyes wide and captivated as Star Wars lit up the big screen and transported him to a galaxy far, far away.  

Like millions around the world, Bharat Nalluri spent the next two hours immersed in dreams of rebels, droids, and distant planets. But for Bharat, it was more than mere escapism - it was a defining moment that would go on to shape his life’s work.  

“There’s a whole bunch of filmmakers around my age who will tell you it all started with seeing Star Wars in the cinema,” says Bharat, speaking from his home in Australia, where he  lives with his family. “It was a game-changing moment for all of us.”  

Old Novo Bharat, then a schoolboy with a head full of stars, is now an internationally acclaimed film and television director known for TV hits such as the BBC’s Spooks, Life on Mars, and Netflix’s Boy Swallows Universe.  

But his story didn’t begin on Tatooine - or in Hollywood, or even London. It began in the corridors of the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, where he arrived as a boy from Guntur, India, carrying dreams as vast as the universe he had glimpsed on screen.  

“I found my dad’s old Super 8 camera under his bed and just started making little films around school,” he recalls. “I got a couple of friends involved, including Paul, who was in my year at school.  

“Paul and I would make films; he’d act in mine; I’d act in his. We made ghost stories, supernatural tales, funny little things. We even made credit sequences with Scrabble boards and animated them for films we never finished!”  

“I look back on that time of discovering my love of film in the heart of RGS and think if I hadn’t found it there, maybe it would never have happened at all.” 

Bharat and Paul were an auspicious creative coupling. ‘Paul’ is fellow ON Paul W S Anderson, acclaimed director of hit Hollywood movies such as Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, and the historical disaster romance Pompeii.  

For both, it all began at the school’s film club, nurtured by cinephile French teacher Dr Walton, and their early experiments in storytelling proved to be far more than just teenage pastimes.  

“We were just trying to work out how to tell a story and get it across to an audience, however small - even if it was just in the art room at RGS. Dr Walton would screen our work, and we’d get either a round of applause or groans!   

“Honestly, nothing’s changed in that respect! That’s still my whole life - either a round of applause, or groans of ‘why did you make this?’” he laughs.  

Bharat joined RGS at the age of 13 and recalls it was then a highly organised environment with a strong emphasis on exams and academic achievement.  

And yet despite the school’s strict ethos, it unlocked something creative in him. “For me, that was the great thing about RGS. I found a bunch of other things that ended up leading me to become a director, surprisingly.”  

He hasn’t been back to the school in decades - not since his very last day in Sixth Form - but he reflects warmly on his time: “I have really fond memories, especially of the film club!”  

When Bharat left RGS in 1983, a career in film felt like an impossible dream for a boy from the North East of England. Undeterred, he wrote a script and convinced a group of dentists to pool £20,000 to help fund the project.  

“Back then, people didn’t even know what a director or a producer was, let alone how to become one,” he laughs.  

Today he sees a more egalitarian industry, especially for young people with easy access to technology and a natural creative spark.  

“Now, with the internet, all the information is out there, but the most practical advice I can give is what most successful filmmakers I know have done: just start making films, like I did with that Super 8 camera.”  

“You’ve got your iPhone, your computer so you can film and edit right away. You don’t have to raise money for film or borrow equipment. Just start shooting things. Good, bad, indifferent - it doesn’t matter. The only way to get better is by doing it.”  

For aspiring directors, he offers one main piece of advice: master the script. “Everything hangs on the script - it’s the spark that gets the whole machine moving.”  

“Often, no one will trust you to direct a script if you haven’t got experience, so the way many people get their first job is by writing their own. If people like it, don’t let it go, say to them ‘you can have it if I get to direct it.’ That’s how I did it. The script is key.” 

Click here to read the full article in the digital edition of ONA Magazine (Issue 115).