Journalist turned national award winning filmmaker, R Sarath was a journalist for seven years with a leading Malayalam News Weekly, Kalakaumudi, before making his foray into visual media. His works include three feature films, two short films, seven documentaries and several plays and multimedia projects.

He started his film career as a documentary director. During the filming of his documentary 'The Painted Epics', he discovered some rare mural paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, which were not exposed to the public yet. These findings have been a landmark in the history of Ravi Varma paintings and was a turning point in his career as an innovative documentary maker as he won the national award for the same. He also received a junior fellowship from Department of Culture, Government of India for his research on Murals.

Gaining experience as a documentary and short film maker, he turned into the feature filmmaking. His debut feature film, 'Sayahnam', won him several awards including the Indira Gandhi National Award 2000. Besides this, it also bagged seven state awards - best film, best actor, best art director, best editor, best singer and best dubbing, from the Kerala Government in 2000. Acclaimed as a remarkable film, Sayahnam got invitations from many International Film Festivals. 

His other feature films - 'Sthithi' and 'Seelabathi' were also critically received in India and abroad.

His short film on Raja Ravi Varma named 'Divine Love' was internationally acclaimed for its visual depiction of the creative influence of Kerala’s tradition performing arts on the great master.

'Bhumikku Oru Charamagitam' (A Requiem To Earth), a short film on eco-feministic aesthetics based on the renowned Malayalam poem by legendary poet ONV Kurup was greatly appreciated for its docu-fictional style and has been screened before elite audience, both at home and abroad.

His latest film is Desire (Hindi/2009)

R. Sarath, a post graduate in English Literature and Journalism, is at present working as the Feature Editor at Information and Public Relations Department of Government of Kerala. He had earlier served as the Secretary to MPCC (Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan) and Bharat Bhavan, Department of Culture, Government of Kerala. He was also the founder Director of Cultural Digital Archives at MPCC. Currently he is the festival director of IUKFF, London.