TEAM

RAM DEVINENI

Producer & Creator
A filmmaker, publisher and founder of Rattapallax films and magazine based in New York City and New Delhi. He produced, edited and directed the feature documentary, The Karma Killings, which was shot in India and released on Netflix. Recently, he produced The Russian Woodpecker, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

SYD FINI

Artist (Priya and the Lost Girls & Priya’s Mask)
He started working in Arya comics and directed and wrote Back From The Other Side, Turquoise Guardian and Stars on earth short animation films. He works as a storyboard artist at the Mill New York and Psyop. He recently finished his graphic novel Saah, about a boy who tries to save pigeons in a fictional middle eastern city torn by war.

TANVI GANDHI

Producer
She is an award-winning film producer with over 20 years of experience in filmmaking and television production. Her journey began in 2000 as an anchor & junior producer in India’s top news channel – NDTV. It led to a 5-year-long stint at the global, iconic youth brand ‘MTV’ as Senior Supervising Producer before she switched to Film Production in 2009. Having worked as Executive Producer in India’s top film companies, Phantom Films and Yash Raj Films where she became its first female EP. Her slate of credits includes award-winning films like Queen, Udta Punjab, Super 30 and Mardaani-2. Her last venture as an Independent Producer, a short, bagged the Best Film award at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2018

NEDA KAZEMIFAR

Colorist (Priya and the Lost Girls & Priya’s Mask)
She was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. where she received her BA in film Directing from Tehran Sooreh University. She had group fine art exhibitions in Florida and Los Angeles. She is currently works as a designer and performer at Chinese theater works, which has performed all over the world.

DIPTI MEHTA

Writer (Priya and the Lost Girls)
She is an award winning, actor and writer. She wrote HONOUR: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan, which is an attempt to give voice and a face to brothel dwellers bringing their humanity to encounter that of her audiences, and is now touring internationally, creating awareness about the issues of trafficking and human rights. She best known for her portrayal of Reina in Life! Camera Action, which brought her multiple international awards and nominations.

PAROMITA VOHRA

Co-Writer (Priya’s Mirror)
She is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and teacher. Her path-breaking films include Unlimited Girls (on feminism in India), Q2P (on toilets, gender and the city), and others. She has written the internationally released Pakistani film, Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters) and several documentaries. She currently writes two popular newspaper columns one of cultural commentary and one on modern love.

VIKAS K. MENON

Co-Writer (Priya’s Shakti)
He is a poet, playwright and songwriter. His poems have been featured in In Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry & Harper Collins Book of English Poetry. He is a board member of Kundiman, the first organization of its kind dedicated to supporting Asian-American poetry.

DAN GOLDMAN

Artist (Priya’s Shakti & Priya’s Mirror)
He writes graphic novels and comics for such companies as AMC Television, Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and New York Magazine. Dan also serves as Second Screen Experience Architect and Transmedia on AMC Television’s flagship original series Breaking Bad, and other shows. His 2006 web-comic, Shooting War earned it an Eisner Award nomination for Best Digital Comic.

LINA SRIVASTAVA

Impact Strategist
She has taught design and social entrepreneurship at Parsons, The New School of Design, and is on faculty in the Masters of Fine Arts Program in Design and Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts, where teaches on media, engagement, activism, and innovation.

MONIKA SAMTANI

Producer
Monika is well known in the Indian American community as a trailblazer for her achievements in the media industry. In the early 1990s, she became first professional South Asian broadcast journalist on the CBS station in Washington, D.C. where she was the morning reporter and news anchor for 15 years. Monika is an award-winning producer/director of the short documentary 'Bee The Future' and has consulted for Girl Rising, SOLD (the movie), and Etsy. She was honored on ABC TV and multiple magazine cover features for her work on women’s issues, is a TEDx talker, and co-founder of The Fem Word, an inclusive media platform broadcasting stories of bold women in creative spaces.

INDRANI RAY

Producer
A self-starter in the film business, Indrani left a successful career in advertising (Grey, Lowe Lintas) to pursue films. Laser-focused on building merit-based safe workspaces and stories headlining fierce brown women she's collaborating globally to create genre-agnostic original content. In Lockdown 2020 Indrani produced The Glass Ceiling, a podcast series featuring brown women in storytelling from the U.S, UK and India and is creating-directing-executive producing Shorts Anthology Love In The Times Of Corona.

RUCHIRA GUPTA

Writer (Priya and the Wolves)
She is a writer, an Emmy winning journalist, founder of an Indian grassroots sex-trafficking organization, Apne Aap Women Worldwide, and professor at New York University. As an activist on social justice and women’s issues, she has won the Clinton Global Citizen Award.

MAIA KUMAR

Editor (Priya and the Swarm)
She is a high school senior in the Bay Area, and enjoys tutoring and running a club that promotes inclusion and diversity for students with disabilities in her high school. In her spare time, she likes to read books about various cultures, write about pressing issues, and encourages women and girls to pursue traditionally male-dominated fields.

MARGARITA KOROL

Co-Producer
She is an artist, writer, and social scientist specializing in human centered experience design. After earning her Master of Fine Arts in Design for Social Innovation at New York City’s School of Visual Arts in 2016, she launched AdaptLab Filmmakers, a neurodiverse social enterprise developed in partnership with the JCC Manhattan Center for Special Needs.

DAVID ROJAS-LEON

Co-Producer
Born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, he incorporates interdisciplinary research skills for human-centered design, systems thinking, and UI/UX. In 2016 he received his Master in Fine Arts in Design for Social Innovation, at School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. He is a Lead Experience Designer at the Institute for Global Health at Mount Sinai.

RENE VERON

Composer & Sound Designer
He has scored for all genres of film, including for features and shorts, dramas, and documentaries. He has worked with the acclaimed director Ram Devineni on several of his movies, including Priya’s Shakti, The Hydra, and The Karma Killings; and he has composed the music for dozens of nationally and internationally-released commercials, including for Verizon, Amnesty International, and McDonald's.

NAOMI RANZ-SCHLEIFER and SHIKHA BHATNAGAR, Gender-Based Violence Advisor. JOAN HILTY, Copy Editor. CATHERINE FLETCHER, Copy Editor. ROHIT PRAKASH, APP Developer. KARINE BENDER, Portuguese Translation. MILA FAHREN, Italian Translation. NATALIA CONTRERAS DE LA LLAVE, Spanish Translation.