Swetha Regunathan (USA)

Swetha Regunathan is finishing her M.F.A. in Film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She also holds a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in New York and a PhD in English Literature from Brown University. Her short film script Forever Tonight won the 2019 BlueCat Screenplay Competition and was a finalist for the Showtime® Tony Cox Screenplay Competition. Her next short film, Wire & Cloth, was awarded a 2019 Alfred P. Sloan production award. Swetha was the producer of If There Is Light, a short documentary about a family living in a shelter in New York City. The film was supported by Queen Latifah’s inaugural Queen Collective grant, in association with Tribeca Studios, and premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. Swetha’s short film Hasim October was shortlisted for a 2017 Lexus Short Films award and premiered on NoBudge in June 2019. Her series The Academy was a finalist for the 2016 Sundance New Voices Lab. Swetha has directed and produced music videos and has written for Huffington Post, n+1, Guernica Magazine and others.

Sundarbans — A directionless young woman reconnects with her father over a sweltering summer in the Sundarbans —a rough-and-tumble delta region in West Bengal, India— after she discovers he’s going blind and battling forces that threaten to sink paradise forever.