Kumar Shahani is a noted Indian film director and screenwriter, best known for his parallel cinema films, Maya Darpan and Khayal Gatha and Kasba.Shahani was born in Larkana, Sindh (now in Pakistan), after the partition of India in 1947, Shahnani's family shifted to the city of Bombay (now Mumbai). He received a B. A. (hons) from the University of Bombay in Political Science and History and studied screenplay writing and Advanced Direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, where he was a student of Ritwik Ghatak. He also studied under the renowned historian D. D. Kosambi. He was awarded a French Government Scholarship for further studies in France,where he studied at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) and assisted Robert Bresson on Une Femme Douce.He returned to India to make his first feature film Maya Darpan in 1972 and had to wait twelve years before he received funding to make his next full-length feature film, Tarang.