Arun Bharali

Who is Arun Bharali?

Arun Petrichor Bharali, known mononymously as Petrichor, is an Anglo-Indian film director, producer and screenwriter.

Bharali trained initially as a musician, receiving a starred first from York University, UK, before completing a Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University of California, San Diego under the supervision of Brian Ferneyhough and Rand Steiger. He also performed as a violinist, cellist and pianist, specializing in contemporary classical music, won awards for Composition at festivals in Darmstadt and Huddersfield and taught for four years in the Music Department at UCSD.

He left academia in 1997 to pursue his interest in film and worked his way up as a freelance script supervisor and occasional reader with UK based companies such as Working Title, Tiger Aspect and the BBC.

In 2006 he made his feature directorial debut having submitted a screenplay to Kevin Spacey's triggerstreet.com website where it was noticed by an American producer who optioned the script and eventually financed the production of the film. The movie, originally entitled Lookalike, was released in North America under the title Bolly Double in 2007. Bolly Double won the Audience Choice award at the 2007 Toronto ReelWorld Festival and a Gold Remi at the 2007 Houston WorldFest.