Ambarien Alqadar

Ambarien Alqadar is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and professor. She began her filmmaking journey as an assistant on sets of Silent Waters that won The Golden Leopard at The Locarno Film Festival. Shaped by the experience of growing up in Jamia Nagar- a neighborhood on the margins of New Delhi, famous for its crushing lack of resources, police atrocities, and the delicious biryani,Ambraien tells universal stories with a culturally specific lens. ‘Who Can Speak of Men?’- her first documentary, was acclaimed as ‘revolutionary in its portrayal of Indian Muslim women’, BFI London. Bird Woman- her work in progress screenplay was selected to The Athena Screenwriters Lab NYC and shortlisted at Sundance. Her films- The Ghetto Girl & Four Women and A Room have won honors at the Mumbai International Film Festival, International Film Festival of India, IDSFF Kerala, SIGNS Kerala, Karachi International Film Festival, Farocki Academy, American Anthropological Association and others. Amraien is a graduate of Jamia Millia Islamia, India, and Temple University, the US where she was a Fulbright Nehru Fellow. She lives between the streets of her home in Jamia Nagar and snowy New York where she teaches at The Rochester Institute of Technology Film and Animation Program.