Arka Das is an Australian actor, director, and screenwriter.
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Early life and education
Arka Das was born in Bangladesh and emigrated to Australia with his family as a child. He grew up in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Ashfield. He attended school and university in Sydney.
Career
Das has played roles in numerous television series, including Shantaram, Pulse, Bite Club, Top of the Lake: China Girl, Safe Home and Bali 2002 He also appeared in films UnIndian (2015), the Academy Award-nominated film Lion (2016), the live-action remake of Mulan (2020), and The Portable Door (2023).
His stage credits include Beached at Sydney's Griffin Theatre and Animals Out of Paper at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre, for which he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2010 Sydney Theatre Awards.
Das is also a screenwriter and director, having made short films, web series, and documentaries. In 2014, he co-created comedy web series The Casuals, which was streamed in the US. His short documentary film Phoenix was a finalist at Focus on Abilities Film Festival in 2016. He then wrote and directed the short film Khana Khazana, which screened at several film festivals in Australia and overseas. It
won several awards at Made in the West Film Festival 2020. It is being developed into a full-length feature film.
For his performance in 2021 anthology film Here Out West, Das was nominated for the 2023 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Supporting Actor. One of eight writers, he wrote and starred in the Brotherhood segment of the film and featured in the next chapter, The Eternal Dance. He also received a nomination for the 2021 AWGIE (Australian Writers Guild) Awards in the Original Feature Film category for the same project.
Das went on to host the ABC Television series 8 Nights Out West in 2022, where he explored different cuisines across Sydney, based on the cultural backgrounds of each of the Here Out West writers.
Filmography
Stage
Das has performed on stage in many productions, including the following: