Jan Kounen is a film director who at the time of Amritavarsham50 was making a full-length documentary on Amma called Darshan. His other films include Blueberry (2004), a mystical cowboy movie based on a French comic book, starring Micheal Madson and Juliette Lewis.

Kounen was born in the Netherlands and studied film in Nice, France at Arts Décoratifs, from which he graduated in 1988.