Born into a business family in Bombay, present-day Mumbai, Gupta earned his MBA from Wingate University in North Carolina before taking a short filmmaking course at the New York Film Academy.[16][17] The initial film assignments he was working on for classes became inspiration for later works. His first film Another Day Another Life a four-minute suspense thriller flick was chosen as an official selection at the Short Film Corner - Cannes Film Festival in 2009.[17] The attention the film received prompted Gupta to continue building a film career.[18]New York Film Academy offered Gupta scholarship to extend his stay in to the one-year program. He shot his first feature, the inspiring family-drama movie Life! Camera Action... with a two-member crew in three languages English, Hindi, Punjabi as part of the story.[19] Gupta followed with a comedy feature Midnight Delight.[9][10]
Honors and appearances
In 2010, Gupta was invited to speak at the Sensoria, an annual week-long film event held every year in Charlotte, North Carolina, where education connects with professionals creating cinematic magic in Hollywood.[20] At Sensoria George Cochran, the event founder & a former Directors Guild of America commercial film director and Vice Chairman of the North Carolina Film Office honored and felicitated Gupta as an industry leader and mentor for the students of the Central Piedmont Community College Arts and filmmaking department.[21] Gupta was again invited to speak at Sensoria in 2012 to share, as quoted by Sarah Perry, "how he made a five-minute film for $100 called Another Day Another Life that a little festival called Cannes chose as an official selection; and how his other film Life! Camera Action... has toured the world and won top awards at renowned festivals".[22][23]
In 2011, Gupta was invited as a special guest speaker at the launch of the New York Film Academy's first open house session in India. The event was held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Mumbai.[24] He is credited for being the first alumnus of the New York Film Academy to have made a short film assignment in to a full-length feature film, while in the program.[17]
In 2013, Symbiosis International University in Pune invited Gupta for a guest lecture on Management & Creative aspects of filmmaking. A SIMColloquium, where eminent speakers from the field of media and communication come to interact with students and enable them to understand how the industry works was organized for Gupta's interaction with the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communications (SIMC) students.[28][29]
Gupta was chosen by Times Now as one of five global Indian nominated from around the world for the "2014 NRI of the Year" award for his "Distinctive Global Achievement in Arts & Entertainment".[30][31][32]