Sucharita Tyagi: The Voice That Changed How India Talks About Movies
Long before “content creator” became a buzzword, Sucharita Tyagi was already building a career out of talking to strangers — first through a radio microphone, later through a camera lens. Today, she’s one of the most recognisable faces in Indian film criticism, known for reviews that feel less like verdicts and more like conversations.
A Delhi Girl With a Radio Voice
Tyagi grew up in Rohini, a neighbourhood in northwest Delhi, and attended Modern School on Barakhamba Road, where she studied science. Movies, though, were never far from her mind — she reportedly used to record mock radio shows for fun as a kid. That early fascination with broadcasting turned real when she enrolled at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University for a degree in communication studies and journalism, and at just 19, landed a job as a radio jockey at a Delhi FM station. From there, her voice found its way onto Red FM, Big FM, and eventually Radio City, where she also hosted “Freedom Live,” a show built around spotlighting independent Indian musicians.
From Airwaves to YouTube
The real turning point came in 2015, when Tyagi moved to Mumbai and joined Film Companion, a digital platform founded by veteran critic Anupama Chopra. Her review series, cheekily titled “Not a Movie Review,” became something of a phenomenon — a handful of episodes were even compiled into a web series for Disney+ Hotstar in 2020. What set her apart wasn’t just opinion, but structure: she’d walk viewers through plot, performances, direction, and the social undercurrents of a film, encouraging them to think rather than just agree or disagree with a star rating.
Her willingness to say the unpopular thing also made headlines — her 2019 review of Kabir Singh, which called out the film’s treatment of women, sparked public back-and-forth with its director. It’s the kind of moment that’s come to define her reputation: unafraid, but never mean-spirited.
Tyagi has also occasionally stepped in front of the camera, appearing as herself in the 2019 short film Lutf and in Vikramaditya Motwane’s 2020 satire AK vs AK. She eventually launched her own independent YouTube channel, where she now posts reviews and filmmaker interviews to a loyal audience, and she’s a member of India’s Film Critics Guild.
A Life Split Between Two Cities
These days, reports suggest Tyagi divides her time between Mumbai and New York, continuing to review both mainstream and independent cinema. As for her exact age — she was born in the late 1980s, which puts her in her late 30s in 2026, though an exact public birth date isn’t widely confirmed.
What’s clear is her influence: she helped prove that a film review could be entertaining, sharp, and thoughtful all at once — and that the internet, not just a newspaper column, could be the place to do it.
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