TRUPTI KOTNI

Student Festival Director

Trupti Kotni is a student of liberal arts and sciences pursuing her degree in Psychology and India Studies. For her, cinema is an escape from the real world, and she enjoys the process of filmmaking. She aims to see TIFA at greater heights in the long run and feels that working for TIFA and meeting new people was an experience that’s broadened her perspective on life and the arts. She is also an artist and a dancer.

MANNAT KAUR

Student Curator and Director (Communication)

Mannat Kaur is a student of liberal arts and sciences pursuing her degree in Political Science and Literature. She finds cinema to be a comfort space that allows an individual. to explore different aspects of life. TIFA has become a platform where she has learned more about cinema as a 21st century art form, and the influence of cinema in the life of the ‘common’. She also is a national-level badminton player, a passionate dancer and a singer.

SHRIYA PRITHVI

Student Curator and Director (Marketing)

Shriya Prithvi is a student of liberal arts and sciences pursuing her degree in Psychology and Computer Science. The portrayal of characters in cinema fascinates her as she learns a lot from them. She believes that TIFA can bring out the best among upcoming teen talents and hopes the festival will be a great success.

SHANTA PADMAVATI

Student Director (Events)

Shanta Padmavathi is a student of liberal arts and sciences pursuing her degree in Psychology and is an aspiring psychologist. She has always been a movie-buff and films are more of an experience for her. She feels that is the way she and her family spend time together. It’s the love and passion she shares for films that brought her to joining team TIFA. She feels TIFA is a way to encourage young adults to explore their view through films, bring in their creativity, bring in new visual texts, and appreciate them when they see the world through a different lens.

JAINAM BAFNA

Student Director (Finance and Hospitality)

Jainam Bafna is a student at school of business and, an enthusiastic learner of every experience, he encounters. Cinema to him is an emotion! Films in general either motivate him or help him cheer up through ‘stuck’ situations. His take on joining TIFA, was to grow and learn the general skills of marketing and curating an event.

Debjani Halder

Debjani Halder is a national and international award- winning scholar and filmmaker. Presently, Assistant Professor of Filmmaking in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences in RV University, Bangalore, her documentary Documenting Agony Ritwik and The Dark have fetched several national and international awards including the National Film Award in 2010 and 2014. She is the author of three monographs and has been widely published in national and international journals. In 2022, she ranked first in the NFDC-Netflix Script Writing Competition.

Deepa Ganesh

Deepa Ganesh has been Deputy Editor, The Hindu for two decades heading the culture pages. Writer, translator and editor, she has received the Sahitya Academy Award for translation of U.R. Ananth Murthy’s stories into English. She has received the Music Critic Award from the Musicological Society and was editor of the Sahitya Academy journal for three years and has five published works.

Nikhil Dayanand

Nikhil Dayanand is a product designer with a keen interest in movies and movie making. He is presently Assistant Professor at the School of Design and Innovation at R V University, Bangalore. He also practices furniture design by himself and has been doing so since 2017.

Ranjan De

Ranjan De is a polymath with lots of interests and 35 plus years of experience in many fields of Communication Design. He is presently the Programme Head of Communication Design at School of Design and Innovation, RV University, Bangalore. He’ has participated as a jury member on many Publishing and Film Award panels. Piyush Roy is an Indian National Film Award winning critic-columnist, and an international author, curator, poet, filmmaker and professor in film and media studies. Presently, he is Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, RV University, Bengaluru and writes a column in The Hindu introducing landmark Indian films, called ‘Friday Talkies’. Former editor of Stardust and Star Week, he has worked at senior reporting positions in The Indian Express and Hindustan Times and has authored two books on cinema, Bollywood FAQ (2019) and Appreciating Melodrama (2022).