GOOD TALK WITH RINTU THOMAS

Rintu Thomas is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker whose body of work sits at the intersection of storytelling as both an art and a conversation. A 2021 IDA Courage Under Fire Award honoree, Rintu is an IDA Logan Elevate grantee and a Sundance Fellow. Her feature documentary, Writing With Fire (2021), described by The Washington Post as “The most inspiring journalism movie – maybe ever” is a double Sundance winner, a New York Times Critics’ Pick and a Grierson, IDA and a PGA Awards nominee. Along with winning 40 awards, the film is India’s first documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award. In 2009, Rintu co-founded Black Ticket Films, a production company invested in the power of storytelling. With a strong eye on social justice stories, Black Ticket Films’ critically acclaimed slate of films is being used as advocacy, impact and education tools by institutions across the world. Rintu’s award winning shorts include Dilli (2010) and Timbaktu (2012). She is a recipient of the President’s Medal of India, a Skoll Stories of Change Fellow and also a South Asia Fellow with the Japan Foundation. She lives between New Delhi and a quaint mountain-town in North India.

Expertise
As an Academy nominated Director-Producer from the global South, I bring to the table the experience of being a BIPOC-woman field-builder whose experiences may be different from filmmakers in the West. Also, having straddled both the independent documentary world and now working on projects that are much more scaled up in the streaming space, I can bring a certain nuance that looks at how storytelling also is evolving in the world we are in today.

Speaking History
- Skoll World Forum (England)
- IDFA Film Festival (Netherlands)
- New Zealand Film Commission Conference Masterclass (New Zealand)
- Spoken at multiple events organised by the Japan Foundation (Japan and South-East Asia)