My Story.
For 18 years, I grew up amidst grand Anglo-Indian architecture, a mixture of Urdu, Hindi, and English, and the defining emphasis on having an attitude of ‘tehzeeb’ (closest translation: elegance or politeness). This was Lucknow, a small city in northern India, where I discovered my love for telling stories. I started out as an editor, working with other people’s footage (and occasionally borrowing a friend’s camera to film my own). The memories of showing my work in auditoriums and being able to make people feel something stuck with me. Even in its amateur form, my work moved someone, made them think—and realizing that was an incredible feeling. Eventually, I found documentary filmmaking to be the perfect intersection of everything I loved: people, technology, art, and social impact.
I received a full-ride scholarship to pursue my undergraduate education at Duke University. Leaving the only home I had ever known, I soon became a traveler with the ambition of seeing the world. During my first week of college, my sister saved up to buy me my first camera: a micro four-thirds Lumix G7 with a f/4.0–f/5.6 12–42mm kit lens. Over the next four years, I conducted fieldwork on Danish ecology in Denmark, photographed the eFIFA world championship, did photojournalism in North Carolina, interviewed drag queens, filmed an illegal street racing crew for three months, created videos for the world’s leading think tank on conflict prevention in Belgium, studied French culture in Provence, worked on film sets in Los Angeles, dealt with heavy media suppression in Kashmir and slept for days in a tent outside an Amazon Warehouse to cover the story of a union vote.
I was intentionally interdisciplinary, taking classes across philosophy, genomics, politics, artificial intelligence, statistics and visual media. I wanted to go everywhere, see everything, and learn about everyone. My production supervisor in Belgium once told me that part of documentary filmmaking is becoming “a sort of mini expert on everything you are filming.” That sentiment stuck with me—turns out my relentless curiosity is a trait made for this work.
As an artist, I seek to create cinematic and technically-sound documentaries that propel the boundaries of the traditional documentary form, blending fiction and non-fiction and pushing the limits of my camera. I’m drawn to new media and immersive storytelling, using my technological skills to engineer innovative emotional experiences. I am particularly drawn to contemporary social issues and problems affecting my generation: repression, surveillance, censorship, authoritarianism and climate change. As someone from the Global South, I think deeply about equity, accessibility, and the postcolonial narratives that have shaped my worldview. I aim to uplift stories that challenge perceptions of the developing world through community-centered storytelling, where my subjects are not just participants but collaborators and friends.
honors
Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar
Humanity in Action Fellow
sERVICE oPPORTUNITIES IN LEADERSHIP (sol) FELLOW
Duke University Scholar
Koonz Human Rights Prize
Benenson Awards in the Arts
Robert E. Pristo Filmmaking Prize
Holsti Prize for Political Science and Public Policy
Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award
Rankin Award in American Government and Constitutional Law
