Meet the new IAWRT India board
Aparna Sanyal is the new IAWRT India managing trustee for 2024-26. Before this election, Aparna served twice on the IAWRT Chapter India Board.
Aparna Sanyal is a Director, Producer and Creative Consultant, with over two decades of experience in creating international OTT and TV programmes, independent documentaries, digital work and offline cultural events. Since 2021, she has been heading a documentary mentoring programme for Public Service Broadcasting Trust, the prestigious documentary body in India.
She has been recognised as a Creative Entrepreneur, been awarded the CharlesWallace India Trust award for research, and won multiple awards for her work, including the National Film Award in India. She is also the co-founder of a decade-old feminist initiative that takes a strengths-based, community perspective on preventive and promotive mental health in India. She has earlier served on the Board of the India Chapter of IAWRT between 2018-2022.
Dr Mausumi Bhattacharyya
Dr Mausumi is an Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Journalism and Mass Communication at Visva-Bharati, an Institution of National Importance in India. She is a distinguished scholar in her field with over two decades of experience. She has led multiple research projects supported by national and international agencies, including the ICSSR, IAWRT-FOKUS (Norway) and the US Dept of State, besides having edited and written multiple research papers and books.
In 2016, she was awarded the Study of the U.S. Institute (SUSI) scholarship in Journalism and Media. She is a pioneering member of the Young Leader Think Tank (YLTT) of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES)-Germany, India Chapter and has served on the Board for the India Chapter of the International Association of Women in Radio & Television between 2015 and 2020 as well.
Imrana Khan
Imrana Khan is a versatile professional who wears many hats: team leader, Producer, Director, Cameraperson, Head of Production, and Communication Expert. She has demonstrated expertise in communications, leading multi-stakeholder projects and building team capacities.
Imrana heads Dusty Foot Productions, a Green Oscar-winning company. In 2018, she received the WWF Prince Bernhard Scholarship for Nature Conservation and The People and Nature Fund Fellowship for the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program at UC Berkeley. Over the past decade, Imrana has produced films on critical wildlife and environmental issues, effectively leading multi-stakeholder projects and enhancing team capacities.
Bina Paul
Bina Paul graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune in 1983 with specialization in Film Editing, Apart from editing over 60 documentaries and feature films, Bina has directed four documentaries. She is the recipient of two National Film Awards given by the President of India for excellence in cinema and three Kerala State Film awards.
Bina has also played a prominent role in the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) and the International Short and Documentary Festival of Kerala right from its inception. She served as Artistic Director for both and has been instrumental in shaping them into important international events in the last two decades. She has served on juries at numerous festivals including Berlin, Durban, Morocco, Romania and Zanzibar. Bina regularly curates programs for film festivals in India and abroad. She has worked as a senior editor at the Centre for Development of Imaging Technology; as the principal of the LV PrasadFilm.She co-founded the Women in Cinema Collective, India’s first association that aims to work towards equal opportunity and dignity of women employees in the film industry. She co-authored an important report ‘Women Shaping the Narrative.
Deepika Sharma
Deepika Sharma is an experienced documentary filmmaker and producer. Her interest as a filmmaker lies inmaking complex narratives around gender and state accessible for a mainstream audience. She has 16years of nonfiction experience ranging from independent set-ups to large scale international productions. Her most recent role was the Creative Producer for the true crime documentary series ‘Wedding.con’.
She has also worked on ‘Bad Boy Billionaires (Netflix), ‘Love and Sex around The World with Christian Amanpour’ (CNN+Netflix), Delhi Cops (Channel 4 & Amazon Prime – USA), India chapter of ‘This is Football’ (Amazon Prime) amongst many others. Deepika has also been the India director for the IAWRT produced documentary ‘Velvet Revolution’. Over the years she has partnered with independent organisations and production houses to produce quality non-fiction content. Deepika has been a IAWRT member since 2013 and has previously been the treasurer for IAWRT Chapter.
Nina Sabnani
Nina is Adjunct Professor at IIT Bombay, IIT Hyderabad, UPES Dehradun a Consultant Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru. She is co-founder member of Animation programme at NID, has taught at NID from 1985 to 2006. Taught at IDC from 2007 to 2021 and has made countless Award winning animated films and illustrated books. She received the National award for Hum Chitra Banate Hain. She was Jury member at Indie manifest, Seoul; Siggraph Asia, Australia; Annecy festival, France
Subasri Krishnan
A filmmaker whose work deals with questions of citizenship through the lens of memory, migration and interrogation of official identity documents, her films include Brave New Medium on internet censorship in Southeast Asia, This or That Particular Person on official identity documents and its relation to personhood, What the Fields Remember on the Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983 and ideas of collective memory and justice, Sikhirni Mwsanai (Dance of the Butterfly) about a disappearing live performance music form in ChirangDistrict, Assam.
Her multi-format project Facing History and Ourselves explores ideas of citizenship, borders and migration in the state of Assam. She also leads the Media Lab at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), an educational institution that works on urban practices. As part of IIHS, she curates the ‘Urban Lens Film Festival’.
Surabhi Sharma
Surabhi Sharma is Program Head and Associate Professor of Practice at New York University Abu Dhabi. She has been producing and directing short and feature length documentaries since 2001.
Dr. Yuki Azad Tomar
Member, Board
Dr. Yuki Azad Tomar is an accomplished academician, filmmaker, and community leader. With a Ph.D. in Journalism and Mass Communication, she serves as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Home Economics, University of Delhi. Dr. Tomar’s expertise extends to Communication and Media for Social Change, where she has made significant contributions through research, teaching, and film production
