Sudha Kongara, also known as Sudha Kongara Prasad, is a movie maker from India. She directs and writes movies mainly in Tamil and Telugu languages. She started her directing career with the Tamil movie called Drohi. In 2016, she made a movie called Irudhi Suttru, which was in both Tamil and Hindi (called Saala Khadoos). She won the Filmfare Award for Best Director – Tamil for it. Later, she directed the Telugu version of the same movie called Guru in 2017. She has won many awards including two National Film Awards, two Filmfare Awards South, and two South Indian International Movie Awards.
In 2020, she wrote and directed a movie called Soorarai Pottru. This movie was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 78th Golden Globe Awards. It was also shown in the Panorama Section of the Shanghai International Film Festival. At the 68th National Film Awards, it won five awards including Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay for Sudha Kongara.
Sudha Kongara was born in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, and grew up in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She studied History and Mass Communication at the Women’s Christian College in Chennai.
Before becoming a director, Sudha worked as a screenwriter for the English movie Mitr, My Friend in 2002. She also worked as an associate director with Mani Ratnam for seven years.
While working on her first Tamil movie Drohi, Sudha started writing a sports drama movie about boxing called Irudhi Suttru. She got actor Madhavan to play the lead role in the movie, which helped make the project more financially stable. Sudha and Madhavan had worked together before in movies directed by Mani Ratnam. Sudha also remade Irudhi Suttru in Telugu as Guru. Her latest movie, Soorarai Pottru, is based on the life of Air Deccan founder Captain GR Gopinath, and it is produced by Suriya’s 2D Entertainment and co-produced by Guneet Monga of Sikhya Entertainment.