Rohan Parashuram Kanawade comes from a humble background, raised in a one-room house in a Mumbai slum by a chauffeur father and homemaker mother.

He is a self-made filmmaker with a background in interior design. His debut short ‘Ektya Bhinti’ (2013) won him the ‘Riyad Wadia Award for Emerging Filmmaker’ at South Asia’s largest queer film festival Kashish MIQFF. His short ‘Khidkee’ (2017) was a part of the 48th Indian Panorama Section of IFFI, Goa.

Impressed by his work, mythology writer Devdutt Pattanaik and UK based production house Lotus Visual extended their financial support to Rohan’s 2019 lesbian short set-in rural India ‘U Ushacha’ (U for Usha), for which he won coveted Satyajit Ray Short Film Award in London, Jury Prize at 30th Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Second Runner Up at 29th Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival and many more. Film was also nominated for Iris Prize UK 2019. This Marathi language short film travelled to 35+ film festivals around the globe, such as 27th Mardi Gras Sydney, 32nd Out on Film Atlanta, 30th Tampa Bay International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Florida, 31st Vancouver Queer Film Festival, 34th Lovers Film Festival Torino, 10th Kashish MIQFF India to name a few. In 2020 January, the same short film was theatrically released in India through Kashish MIQFF, and, in 2021 June, it began streaming on British Film Institute’s OTT platform BFI Player.

‘Arms of a Man’ is Rohan’s debut Marathi language feature film which was part of the Film London Production Finance Market under New Talent Strand, Marathi Scriptwriting Camp organized by MFSCDC and NFDC, as well as NFDC Film Bazaar in 2021.