Biography:

Originally from India, Kaushik Sampath earned a Master's degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and worked in Silicon Valley for several years before deciding to pursue his passion for film-making at the prestigious USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Kaushik's graduate thesis film at USC, "GROOMING", premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the faculty awards for outstanding achievement in both directing and cinematography at USC’s own First Film Festival, in addition to representing USC at the 12th Annual Global Chinese Universities Film Festival in Hong Kong. After a very successful festival run in the US "GROOMING" was nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) US Student Film Award.

While at USC Kaushik was selected, in a highly competitive process, to direct the opening segment of an anthology feature, “The Labyrinth”, produced by actor/director James Franco and his producing partner Vince Jolivette.

Kaushik's second semester class project at USC titled “The Harbinger”, a 6 minute short, won a lot of critical acclaim and was screened in film festivals across the country. “The Harbinger” was also instrumental in helping Kaushik win the very coveted and prestigious Annenberg Fellowship, the highest level of scholarship given to any student in the school of Cinematic Arts.

Kaushik's industry experience includes his apprenticeship under two time Oscar nominated DP Jeff Cronenweth, ASC on "Hitchcock" starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Dame Helen Mirren, Toni Colette along with Scarlett Johansson & Jessica Biel. Kaushik's apprenticeship continued through many commercial projects and onto the set of director David Fincher's “Gone Girl”. He previously worked on "Bridesmaids", as a camera PA, under the guidance of Oscar nominated DP Robert Yeoman, ASC (Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel). Kaushik also interned for Skydance Productions (Top Gun 2, Terminator Genisys, WWZ/2, Jack Reacher, Star Trek 2/3, Mission Impossible 4/5, True Grit)

Soon after graduating, Kaushik worked in a writers room for Director Timur Bekmambetov’s production company Bazelevs, where he helped develop their “screen life” format movies, similar to “Unfriended” and “Searching”.

Kaushik’s sci-fi script “qualia” was chosen, from almost 400 scripts, for the inaugural South Asian writers lab called 1497. As part of this lab Kaushik was mentored by acclaimed film maker Gurinder Chadha (Bend it like Beckham, Blinded by the Light, Paris je t’aime).

Most recently Kaushik finished co-directing an eight episode Amazon Prime Original series in Mumbai, India with acclaimed showrunner/director Raja Krishna Menon.

Kaushik's horror script “The Shaman's Daughter” made a splash in Hollywood when it was recently chosen to be a part of Blumhouse and K Period Media's inaugural Scream-writing Fellowship, in partnership with the prestigious Sundance Institute. As part of this fellowship Kaushik was mentored by acclaimed writer/director/producer Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Hush, Gerald's game, Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass). Kaushik is very excited about the prospect of developing and directing this script with the backing of horror heavyweight Blumhouse productions.

Kaushik’s currently in pre-production on his first feature… an indie sci-fi horror that he will be shooting in Tennessee soon.