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Picture Courtesy: Cidney Hue
Snigdha (She/They) is an India-born, New York-based filmmaker with a bachelor's and master's degree in journalism and advertising. Growing up in a small city, she navigated gender norms daily, which was also reflected in films accessible to her at the time. Her first brush with filmmaking happened in 2006 while studying journalism when she and four other classmates made a docu-drama titled Four Women And A Hole as part of their thesis film. The story was about four women on a road trip stuck in a flat tire situation with an all-women cast and crew. The film's title made people uncomfortable, starting a dialogue about women and their sexual repression in a patriarchal society.
After a brief stint at an advertising and design firm, she reconnected with her passion for storytelling by participating in an on-campus filmmaking competition while pursuing her Master's in advertising. After winning the competition, she moved to the US to pursue filmmaking.
With a focus on social impact stories, her work explores themes of the gender spectrum, women and children. Her conceptual dance video, Aghor, sheds a different lens on an often stigmatized and sensationalized group of ascetics in India. It is a tribute to those who have paved the way for others by doing the simple but daring act of being themselves. Her first short, Look Like You, a family LGBTQ+ story, is currently playing at a broad spectrum of film festivals. Her upcoming short, Holy Curse, set in India, is a coming-of-age dramedy from a gender-nonconforming child's perspective.
Her work spans from narrative films and music videos to commercial content and has screened at festivals such as Asian American International Film Festival, HollyShorts, Cinequest, New York Shorts International Film Festival, Delhi Art Gallery (New York), and has featured in Oyster Magazine, Seema Magazine, Brown Girl Magazine, and Chilean Film Catalog. She is also developing a feature screenplay, an adaptation of Look Like You (formerly The Other Side). The Other Side was one of the top 10 short screenplays at ScreenCraft 2019 and is supported by The Gotham (formerly IFP) as a fiscal sponsor.