Nisha Pahuja

Last updated

Nisha Pahuja
Nisha Pahuja, 2012.jpg
Pahuja in 2012
Born (1967-06-03) 3 June 1967 (age 56)
New Delhi, India
Occupation(s)Writer, filmmaker, artist

Nisha Pahuja (born 1967) is an Indian-born Canadian filmmaker, based in Toronto, Ontario. [1] [2]

Contents

Her credits include Academy Awards nominated documentary film To Kill a Tiger , winner of 19 awards from festivals including a Nomination at TIFF, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Doc Aviv, and the Canadian Screen awards. The film will be released theatrically in the US in the Fall of 2023. The New York Times included it in their list of "Most Anticipated Fall Releases" and Anne Thompson at the Indie Wire named it to her Oscars' Contenders list for 2024. [3] [4] Both Mindy Kaling and Dev Patel signed onto the film as Executive Producers along with Andy Cohen, Anita Lee, Atul Gawande, Andrew Dragoumis and others. [2]

Pahuja's previous films include the Emmy nominated The World Before Her , the feature documentary Bollywood Bound and the three-part series Diamond Road.

This writer/artist/director was introduced to film through studying English literature, working in social services and through working as a documentary researcher. [1] In 2014 Pahuja was invited to be a Resident Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center and later served on their arts selection panel from 2016-2020. [5]

Early life

Pahuja moved from India to Canada with her family when she was a child in the early 1970s. [6] Growing up, Nisha faced adversity as she was bombarded with a new "western lifestyle". [7] Growing up she was strongly influenced by Bollywood films but her creative inclinations were more geared to Literature. [7]

Career

Pahuja studied English Literature at the University of Toronto, [8] with the intention of writing fiction. [9] A chance meeting with local Canadian Producer, Geeta Sondhi, who hired her as a researcher on the CBC documentary "Some Kind of Arrangement" set her on the path to documentary filmmaking. [8]

Pahuja chose to focus her efforts on documentary filmmaking specifically because she loved seeking real individuals with real stories who paint a great picture of bigger societal problems. [1] Real stories attract her because, "A human being reveals themselves to you in such a profound kind of way. I think I was just really drawn to that, to the idea of real people, real stories and being able to connect to them.". [10]

Early in her Career, Pahuja worked as a researcher with Canadian filmmakers John Walker and Ali Kazimi. [11] Soon after, Pahuja began her own filmmaking career. [1]

Her films have been successful internationally including North America and India. [12] The World Before Her , which explored the complex and conflicting environment for young girls in India by following women participating in the Miss India Pageant as well as girls being trained in the Durga Vahini, the women's wing of the VHP. [13] "The World Before Her" premiered at the Tribeca International Film Festival where is won the Best Documentary award. The film went on to screen at numerous festivals world-wide picking up several awards along the way including Best Canadian Documentary Hot Docs and the Vancouver Film Critics' Best Canadian Documentary Award.

After the 2012 Delhi gang rape case happened, Nisha became determined to screen her film The World Before Her across India in order to have an impact on women's rights and female foeticide and infanticide. Working with her team she raised funds through foundations and crowdsourcing. [14] In order to pursue her dream, Nisha created a Kickstarter with the goal of reaching $50,000 [15] The campaign surpassed its original goal by reaching $57,000.

In 2014, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap lent his name to the film in India, significantly boosting its release. Later, Pahuja and her team traveled to 4 states working with NGOs and women's rights organizations screening the film in underserved communities and holding in depth conversations with various audiences. The success of the Impact campaign convinced Pahuja of the importance of documentaries in creating social change at various levels. [14]

"There are days on the road when the magnitude of what we’re hearing is overwhelming and I keep asking myself how can we make a change? Can we really be having an impact in the face of this? In a country that is systematically killing its girl children, what power does a film have or a motley crew of four even with the best of intentions? But it does, and we do because we’re listening and we’re challenging....Change happens in small shifts, often indiscernible, often immeasurable. And sometimes the best way to make that shift is through the simple act of sharing stories." [16]

In 2022, Pahuja released the documentary To Kill a Tiger , which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and won the award for Best Canadian Feature Film. [17]

Awards and nominations

Nisha's feature film debut, Bollywood Bound, was a 2002 Gemini Award Nominee. In 2008, Nisha won the Gemini Award for Best Documentary Series for Diamond Road. Her third feature, The World Before Her earned Nisha an international following, winning awards along the festival circuit, including Best Documentary Feature and Jury Award Winner from the Tribecca Film Festival, Best Canadian Documentary from Hot Docs and TIFF's Canada's Top Ten.

Pahuja's latest film, To Kill a Tiger, had its world premiere at TIFF where it won the Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film. Since then, it has won 19 awards including Best Documentary Feature Palm Springs International Film Festival; three Canadian Screen awards including the Ted Rogers award for Best Feature Length Documentary 2023 and the Beyond the Screen Award at Doc Aviv 2023. To Kill a Tiger was voted a TIFF Canada's top ten and is slated for a US theatrical release in Fall 2023 . [18] It also received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2024

The World Before Her :
"Best Canadian Feature Documentary" (2012) at the Edmonton Film Festival,
"Best Documentary" (2012) at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
"Best Foreign Film" (2012) Traverse City Film Festival
"Best International Document" (2013) Byron Bay International Film Festival

"Special Jury Mention" (2012) at the San Diego Asian Film Festival
"Best Documentary Feature" (2012) at the Tribeca Film Festival
"VFCC" Award for Best Screenplay at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle (2012)
"Best Documentary" (2012) at the Warsaw International Film Festival
This film also had nominations in:
Zurich Film Festival (2012) for "Best Documentary"
Genie Awards (2012) for "Ted Rogers Best Feature Length Documentary"
Canadian Screen Awards (2013) "Best Feature Length Documentary"
Santa Barbara Film Festival (2013) "Social Justice Award for Documentary Film"
[19]

Filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toronto International Film Festival</span> Annual film festival held in Toronto, Canada

The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, founded in 1976 and taking place each September. It is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingrid Veninger</span> Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter

Ingrid Veninger is a Canadian actress, writer, director, producer, and film professor at York University. Veninger began her career in show business as a child actor in commercials and on television; as a teen, she was featured in the CBC series Airwaves (1986–1987) and the CBS series Friday the 13th: The Series (1987–1990). In the 1990s, she branched out into producing, and, in 2003, she founded her own production company, pUNK Films, through which she began to work on her own projects as a writer and director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Steinbauer</span> American film director

Benjamin Jeffrey Steinbauer is an American director, showrunner, writer and producer, who is best known for directing the feature documentary Winnebago Man (2009). Steinbauer has directed other documentaries, including Chop & Steele (2022), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Brute Force (2012) and Heroes From The Storm (2017), as well as episodic television, show running the Hulu doc comedy series, High Hopes, for Jimmy Kimmel's Kimmelot, the Emmy-winning PBS show, Stories of the Mind, and the CBS doc series Pink Collar Crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marshall Curry</span> American film director (born 1970)

Marshall Curry is an Oscar-winning American documentary director, producer, cinematographer and editor. His films include Street Fight, Racing Dreams, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Point and Shoot, and A Night at the Garden. His first fiction film was the Academy Award-winning short film The Neighbors' Window (2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Stewart (filmmaker)</span> Canadian photographer, filmmaker and conservationist

Rob Stewart was a Canadian photographer, filmmaker and conservationist. He was best known for making and directing the documentary films Sharkwater and Revolution. He drowned at the age of 37 while scuba diving in Florida, filming Sharkwater Extinction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Officer</span> Canadian writer, filmmaker, and ice hockey player (1975–2023)

Charles Officer was a Canadian film and television director, writer, actor, and professional hockey player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pan Nalin</span> Indian film director

Nalin Kumar Pandya, popularly known as Pan Nalin, is an Indian filmmaker, best known for directing award-winning movies like Samsara (2001), Valley of Flowers (2006), Angry Indian Goddesses (2015) and the semi-autobiographical Chhello Show (2021). His debut feature Samsara (Miramax) was worldwide critical and commercial triumph and went on to win awards like Best First Feature Film at Durban International Film Festival, "Grand Jury Prize – Special Mention" at AFI Fest, Special Jury Award at Santa Barbara International Film Festival and "Most Popular Feature Film" at Melbourne International Film Festival in 2002. Since then Nalin has been actively making fiction and non-fiction movies which have been coproduced with countries like India, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USA. Nalin's movies have been distributed worldwide.

Nick Hector is a British Canadian film producer and editor, and professor of film production at the University of Windsor.

<i>Teta, Alf Marra</i> 2010 Emirati film

Teta, Alf Marra is an Arabic documentary film about a feisty Beiruti grandmother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ankita Shorey</span> Indian model and actress

Ankita Shorey, is an Indian actress, model, and beauty pageant titleholder, who was crowned the Femina Miss International 2011, and represented India at the Miss International 2011. She was featured in the Canadian documentary: The World Before Her, presented by Anurag Kashyap, and was written and directed by Nisha Pahuja.

<i>War Witch</i> 2012 film

War Witch is a 2012 Canadian dramatic war film written and directed by Kim Nguyen and starring Rachel Mwanza, Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien and Serge Kanyinda. It is about a child soldier forced into a civil war in Africa, and who is believed to be a witch. The film was primarily shot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in French and Lingala.

<i>Stories We Tell</i> 2012 film by Sarah Polley

Stories We Tell is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Sarah Polley and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film explores her family's secrets—including one intimately related to Polley's own identity. Stories We Tell premiered August 29, 2012 at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, then played at the 39th Telluride Film Festival and the 37th Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, it was added to the Toronto International Film Festival's list of the top 10 Canadian films of all time, at number 10. It was also named the 70th greatest film since 2000 in a 2016 critics' poll by BBC.

<i>The World Before Her</i> 2012 Canadian film

The World Before Her is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Nisha Pahuja and produced by Toronto's Emmy Award winning Storyline Entertainment. The film explores the complex and conflicting environment for young girls in India by profiling two young women participating in two very different types of training camp — Ruhi Singh, who aspires to become Miss India, and Prachi Trivedi, a Hindu nationalist with the Durga Vahini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Jackson (filmmaker)</span> First Nations filmmaker

Lisa Jackson is a Canadian Screen Award and Genie Award-winning Canadian and Anishinaabe filmmaker. Her films have been broadcast on APTN and Knowledge Network, as well as CBC's ZeD, Canadian Reflections and Newsworld and have screened at festivals including HotDocs, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Melbourne, Worldwide Short Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Cohen (filmmaker)</span> American film producer

Andrew "Andy" Cohen is a three-time Emmy nominated independent filmmaker and journalist whose recent film,To Kill a Tiger, is nominated for a 2024 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Reichert</span> American filmmaker and activist (1946–2022)

Julia Bell Reichert was an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist. She was a co-founder of New Day Films. Reichert's filmmaking career spanned over 50 years as a director and producer of documentaries.

Smriti Mundhra is an American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her production company, Meralta Films, specializes in documentary films and non-fiction content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2022 Toronto International Film Festival</span> 47th edition of the festival

The 47th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 8 to 18, 2022.

<i>To Kill a Tiger</i> 2022 Canadian film

To Kill a Tiger is a 2022 Hindi-language Canadian documentary film, directed by Nisha Pahuja. The film centres on a family in Jharkhand, India, who are campaigning for justice after their teenage daughter was brutally raped.

Madison Thomas is an independent film and television writer and director from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She is most noted for her 2022 documentary film Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Indiewire. "Meet the 2012 Tribeca Filmmakers #5: 'The World Before Her' Director Nisha Pahuja. Indiewire, 2012
  2. 1 2 Pahuja, Nisha. "To Kill A Tiger". Media Space. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  3. Thompson, Anne. "2024 Oscars: Best Documentary Feature Predications". IndieWire. IndieWire. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  4. Cohn, Gabe. "Here Are the Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2023". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  5. The Rockefeller Foundation, 2015
  6. Cincinnati World Cinema "The World Before Her"
  7. 1 2 Ali, Firdaus, "Bollywood Calling" Rediff Movies, 2002
  8. 1 2 (2015, 8 March). Being The Change. The Tribune
  9. Pahuja, N. (2015, 1 January). A Conversation with India. UofT Magazine
  10. "POV Documentaries with a point of view, "The World Before Her" American Documentary Inc., 2013
  11. Robinson, T., "Transcending Tribeca: Nisha Pahuja of 'The World Before Her' A.V. Club 2012
  12. IBN "'The World Before Her' director Nisha Pahuja says she doesn't want to direct Bollywood films" Press Trust of India 2014
  13. Pahuja, Nisha (10 June 2014). "Help Comes in Small Measures". The Hindu. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  14. 1 2 Thakur, Tanul. "The story behind a successful kickstarter film project" The Sunday Guardian, 2014
  15. Metro Plus "Help Comes in Small Measures" The Hindu 2014
  16. "World Before Her: Filmmaker Nisha Pahuja talks about violence and stories that will bring change". Firstpost. 16 June 2015. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  17. "Toronto International Film Festival announces 2022 award winners".
  18. Jeffrey, Andrew (9 December 2022). "Nisha Pahuja, Anita Lee honoured by DOC Institute" . Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  19. The World Before Her Official Site 2015