Sankalp Reddy

Sankalp Reddy was born and brought up in Hyderabad. He graduated from CVR College of Engineering and moved to Australia for his MBA at Griffith University, Brisbane. He later dropped out after a semester and joined Griffith Film School, a top creative arts school in Australia, for pursuing MFA in film direction.^{[2][additional citation(s) needed]}

Reddy researched about submarines for a year and decided to make a film set in a submarine. Later, he wrote a book titled The Blue Fish to own the copyrights to make a film. It later was the basis of his feature film debut with Ghazi (2017).^[3] The film is inspired by true events from the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971.^[4][5]

The war film is an underwater tale of the courage and patriotism of the men aboard the Indian submarine, INS Karanj (S21), which destroyed the Pakistani PNS Ghazi when it ventured into Indian waters to destroy INS Vikrant on the shores of R. K. Beach in Visakhapatnam.^[6][7] Ghazi was screened at the Jagran Film Festival,^[8] and garnered the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu at the 65th National Film Awards 2018.^[9][10]

In 2018, Reddy directed the space thriller film Antariksham 9000 KMPH, starring Varun Tej. Though it was praised for its attempt to introduce a new genre in Telugu cinema, it ended up as a commercial failure.^[11][12] He then directed IB71, a 2023 Indian Hindi-language spy thriller film based on the 1971 Indian Airlines hijacking.^[13]