Direction
Three released features across romantic drama, crime thriller and sports drama, and Texla in production as a multilingual release for 2026.
07Creative Journey
One instinct,
several forms.
Direction is the centre of the work, but not the whole of it. Across two decades Aishwarya Rajinikanth has moved between film, non-fiction, singing, classical dance, publishing and public advocacy — each one a different way of telling the same kinds of stories.
Cinema · Page · Stage · Advocacy
01The Thread
Attention to what
sits just outside the frame.
A director’s filmography is a public document; a creative life is usually less tidy than that. Hers has run in several directions at once — a documentary about people the industry does not name, a memoir written first as a private diary, a classical dance training carried since childhood, an advocacy appointment, a short-form digital channel.
What connects them is a preference for the vantage point slightly off-centre: the person beside the star, the discipline behind the performance, the story underneath the story being told.
02Chapters
Six directions, one working life.
Documentary
Cinema Veeran (2017): 51 minutes on the stunt artistes of Tamil cinema, produced by Wunderbar Films with narration by Rajinikanth.
Playback singing
Two recordings — “Natpae Natpae” (2003) and “Un Mela Aasadhan” (2010) — the second nominated at the Filmfare Awards South.
Writing
Standing on an Apple Box: The Story of a Girl Among the Stars, HarperCollins India, December 2016 — begun as a diary kept over several years.
Bharatanatyam
Trained under Meenakshi Chitharanjan of the Kaladiksha school; performed at the United Nations headquarters for International Women’s Day in March 2017.
Digital & advocacy
Ten Entertainment, a YouTube channel for original short-form work announced in July 2015; and, from August 2016, UN Women’s Advocate for Gender Equality in India.
03The Written Word
A diary that
became a book.
Standing on an Apple Box: The Story of a Girl Among the Stars was published by HarperCollins India in December 2016. It was not conceived as a book: it began as a private diary kept over several years, and only later took the shape of a memoir.
The title borrows a piece of set equipment — the small wooden riser used to bring a performer up into frame — and turns it into an image for a life lived adjacent to enormous fame.
- TitleStanding on an Apple Box: The Story of a Girl Among the Stars
- PublisherHarperCollins India
- PublishedDecember 2016
- ISBN978-93-5264-175-8
04Advocacy
Speaking for
the work of others.
In August 2016 she was appointed UN Women’s Advocate for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in India — a public role that placed her advocacy alongside her filmmaking rather than in place of it.
In March 2017 she performed Bharatanatyam at the United Nations headquarters to mark International Women’s Day, bringing the classical form she had trained in since childhood to an international platform.
And Next
The work continues
on the floor.
Texla went before the cameras in June 2026 — her first feature conceived as a multilingual release.
The director’s portfolio→Enquiries
Collaboration
enquiries.
For press, festival, distribution and professional enquiries, please write or call. All correspondence is handled directly.