Pocket Powerhouses: Indian Directors dazzle MAMI 2025 with iPhone 16 Pro Max Shorts

Mumbai’s cinematic pulse beat faster this week as the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) 2025 festival unveiled a bold new chapter in Indian filmmaking. Four emerging directors—Amrita Bagchi, Rohin Raveendran Nair, Chanakya Vyas, and Shalini Vijaykumar—premiered short films shot entirely on the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max and edited on the latest MacBook Pro M4 Max, proving that world-class storytelling now fits in your pocket.

Guided by industry legends such as Konkona Sen Sharma, Vikramaditya Motwane, Lijo Jose Pellissery, and Vetri Maaran, these directors tapped the iPhone's high-end capabilities—Cinematic mode, 4K120 fps, Action mode stabilization, and 5x Telephoto lens—to create rich narratives in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, and Hindi. The MacBook Pro's incredibly powerful M4 Max chip and Final Cut Pro editing system allowed swift, pro-grade post-production, shrinking the script-to-screen process to only ten weeks.

The project, "MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone," not only opens up filmmaking to everyone by reducing technical impediments, but also showcases the cultural diversity of India. Festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur was quoted as saying that these shorts "beautifully contextualize the unique voices of filmmakers across India's regions and languages."

Source: BusinessWorld