Roshan Abbas
Roshan Abbas is an Indian director, best known for Tamil cinema. Roshan Abbas began their career in 2011. With 30 credits to their name, Roshan Abbas remains one of the most prolific and celebrated talents in the industry. An emerging voice in Tamil cinema, Roshan Abbas is already attracting significant attention for their distinctive work.
Biography
Roshan Abbas is a Hindi cinema director, radio jockey, television host, and event entrepreneur based in Mumbai, best known for directing the 2011 Bollywood romantic comedy Always Kabhi Kabhi, produced by Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment. Born in 1970 in Lucknow and educated at La Martinière College, he created over 3,000 hours of radio programming and won Best Television Show Host at the Annual TV Awards in 2001 before making his feature film directorial debut. Always Kabhi Kabhi was adapted from his own 1999 stage play Graffiti and starred Ali Fazal, Zoa Morani, and Satyajeet Dubey. Beyond film, he co-founded Kommune (with Gaurav Kapur and Ankur Tewari), a Mumbai-based performance arts and spoken-word collective that hosts cultural conversations with figures like poet Gulzar.
Career Milestones
Began career as Radio Jockey with Times FM (Radio Mirchi), creating over 3000 hours of radio programming
Won Screen Award for Best TV Host for hosting popular game and chat shows
Won three RAPA (Radio and TV Artiste) Awards for Best Radio Host
Made Bollywood directorial debut with Always Kabhi Kabhi, produced by Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment
View film →Co-founded Kommune, a performing arts collective for storytellers, expanding into live storytelling and spoken word
Roshan Abbas by the Numbers
If you watched every Roshan Abbas film back-to-back, you'd be at it for roughly 2 hours.
Filmography
See all 30 credits →Career Analytics
Language Distribution
Films by Decade
Did You Know?
Roshan Abbas is an Indian film director, actor, and television host.
He is the founder and managing director of the event management company Geometry Encompass.
He hosted the popular MTV show 'MTV Housefull' in the early 2000s.
He directed the 2010 Bollywood film 'Always Kabhi Kabhi'.
He is also a noted radio jockey and has worked with radio stations like Radio Mirchi.
Legacy & Influence
Roshan Abbas is recognized as a multifaceted creative force whose primary impact on Indian cinema stems from his work as a writer, director, and pioneering event director. His career trajectory began not in film but in media and entertainment, where he founded the event management company Geometry Encompass and later became a prominent radio jockey and television host. This background in live entertainment and audience engagement deeply informed his cinematic approach. Abbas made his directorial debut with the 2010 film "Always Kabhi Kabhi," a teen drama set in a school environment. While the film itself had a modest reception, it was notable for attempting to authentically capture the language, anxieties, and dynamics of urban Indian youth at the time, a niche that was still developing in mainstream Hindi cinema. His more significant contribution came as a writer for the 2014 musical drama "Mickey Virus," which explored the world of hacking and cybercrime, again tapping into contemporary youth culture with a specific subcultural lens. Beyond his direct filmography, Abbas's broader legacy lies in his role as a bridge between different entertainment mediums. He is credited with bringing a structured, conceptual, and narrative-driven approach to large-scale live events and award shows in India, influencing their production design and storytelling. This expertise in crafting experiential narratives for live audiences subtly permeates the ceremonial and performative aspects of the film industry's public face. His work, therefore, represents a confluence of cinema, television, radio, and live event production, marking him as a versatile creator who expanded the scope of how stories could be told and experiences curated within the Indian entertainment ecosystem.