Sayani Gupta Makes U.S. Feature Debut in 'Arya', Shooting Now in Minnesota

Indian actor Sayani Gupta will make her U.S. feature film debut in Arya, a drama now shooting in Duluth, Minnesota, according to Deadline.

The film stars Gupta as Arya Sinha, a disciplined piano teacher from a prestigious Indian conservatory who reluctantly accepts an assignment in northern Minnesota. Her mission: rescue a struggling school band program — and, in doing so, advance her career ambitions back home.

Behind the camera, Arya marks the feature directorial debut of Neil Tuli, who previously held strategy roles at Netflix and Illumination, the animation studio behind the Despicable Me franchise. Tuli produces under his banner American Haathi, alongside Pallavi and Keertana Sastry of Adda G Productions, whose credits include Land of Gold. Gupta herself serves as an executive producer.

Gupta brings a career's worth of festival credentials to the project. Her breakout role came in Shonali Bose's Margarita with a Straw, in which she played a blind Pakistani-Bangladeshi queer student activist; the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. Two more of her features — Parched and The Hungry — also bowed at TIFF. She earned an International Indian Film Academy nomination for the Hindi-language socio-political drama Article 15, and her acting credits include the Netflix series Delhi Crime and the film Axone.

She is an alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, one of the country's foremost film schools. Beyond acting, Gupta wrote, directed and produced the short film Aasmani, a tender portrait of a grandmother and granddaughter on a nostalgic journey together. The short was screened at the New York Indian Film Festival in 2026.

Gupta is represented by Matt Kniaz at Crimson Media and Suchir Batra with Zero Gravity Management.

For a performer whose career has been rooted in Indian cinema, Arya offers a first step onto American screens — paired with a first-time director whose background sits on the business and strategy side of the industry rather than the camera department. The Minnesota setting, far from the usual film-production hubs of Los Angeles or New York, gives the production a distinct regional backdrop. No release date or distributor has been announced.