Join us for our next Pano Power Hour featuring Meenakshi Shedde, a veteran film curator, programmer, and jury member, who has been on the jury of celebrated festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. During this session, you will learn how to catch the eye of festival programmers and hear tips on creating a strong festival strategy for your film. The event will be moderated by Pano Advisory Board Member Richa Rudola.
About the Host
Meenakshi Shedde is an India and South Asia Delegate at the Berlin Film Festival, pre-selecting their films since 1998, and an independent film curator, based in Mumbai. Winner of India’s National Film Award for Best Film Critic, she has been on the jury of 20 international film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, and Venice.
As Curator/Programmer/Consultant, she has worked with the Berlin Film Festival, TIFF Cinematheque-Toronto, Locarno, Busan, Dubai Film Festivals; British Film Institute (BFI), Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA, Australia), and Kochi Muziris Biennale (India). A journalist, she has freelanced for Variety, Screen International, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Cahiers du Cinema, and Times of India; is a columnist with Sunday Midday, and has written for/edited 20 books, mainly on cinema.
She has been a Script Mentor/Consultant for 15 years on Script Labs worldwide, and on the selection committees of top script and film funds of prestigious film institutions in the US, Europe, and Asia, including the Sundance Institute Screenwriters’ Labs-India, Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, Venice Film Festival’s Biennale College Cinema, Rotterdam Film Festival’s Hubert Bals Fund, Locarno Film Festival-Open Doors, Asia Pacific Screen Lab, Australia; Dhaka International Film Festival’s West Meets East Screenplay Lab; Dhaka Doc Lab; Sultana’s Dream: Breaking the Silence: Script Mentor for an all-women lab addressing sexual abuse, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Clinik, South Asian Filmmakers’ Lab, Docskool, Kathmandu (Nepal) and Bangalore, and National Film Development Corp (NFDC, India). This work includes films, projects, and scripts, both fiction and documentary.
About the Moderator
Richa Rudola is a statistician-turned-filmmaker. Her films have screened at 45+ festivals around the world and won 10+ awards. Her work has been supported by The Future Of Film Is Female, Stowe Narrative Lab, Tasveer, and Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute. You can catch her films on Amazon Prime, ShortsTV, Tasveer TV, Future Of Film Is Female, Alaska Airlines, and Visible Poetry Project.
Richa's works marry the cerebral with the emotional and aim to bring you into the metacognitive rabbit holes she herself finds fascinating. Current projects include a TV series in development about neuroscience which won Best Hour Pilot at the 2020 Nashville Film Festival; a genre anthology piece for the Open Door Film Project, and a feature-length film about the self-perception of motherhood. Her work has been profiled in Women & Hollywood, Brown Girl Magazine, New York Women in Film & Television podcast, and more. She is a 2022 New York Stage & Film Fellow.
Richa is a strong proponent of increasing diversity in storytelling and serves on the advisory board for Pano (formerly, NYC Women Filmmakers), a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting women in film. She is drawn to stories of courage, even more as a new mother. She grew up in India and currently resides in NYC with her husband, baby boy, and a punkish puppy.
