# Sooni Taraporevala

Sooni Taraporevala (born 1957) is an Indian screenwriter, photographer, and filmmaker who is the screenwriter of Mississippi Masala, The Namesake and Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay!, all directed by Mira Nair. She also adapted Rohinton Mistry's novel Such A Long Journey and wrote the films Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, her directorial debut Little Zizou, and Yeh Ballet, a Netflix original film that she wrote and directed.
Taraporevala wrote the screenplay for and directed her first feature film, Little Zizou (2007), an ensemble piece set in Mumbai. This film explores issues facing the Parsi community to which she belongs. It went on to win the Silver Lotus Award (2009) at the National Film Awards for Best Film on Family Values.
She was awarded the Padma Shri by Government of India in 2014. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Delhi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

## Early life and education

Taraporevala was born to a Parsi family in Mumbai in 1957. Her granduncle had been a studio photographer in Bombay, and her father Rumi had been an amateur photographer. She completed her schooling from Queen Mary School, Mumbai. Taraporevala got her first Instamatic camera at age 16. She received a full scholarship to attend Harvard University as an undergraduate, where with a loan from a roommate she bought a Nikkormat camera, which was stolen upon her return to Bombay in the 1980s. At Harvard she majored in English and American Literature, she took many film courses including filmmaking taught by Alfred Guzzetti. Taraporevala met Mira Nair as an undergraduate, leading to their longtime creative collaboration. Next she joined the Cinema Studies Department at New York University, and after receiving her MA in Film Theory and Criticism, in 1981, she returned to India to work as a freelance still photographer. Her early work from this period was shot on a Leica and her father's Nikon. She returned to Los Angeles in 1988 and worked as a screenwriter, writing commissioned screenplays for a wide variety of studios including Universal, HBO and Disney. She moved back to India for good in 1992 where she lives with her husband Firdaus Batlivala and children Jahan and Iyanah. Jahan and Iyanah Batlivala played the role of Xerxes and Liana respectively in Little Zizou.

## Screenplays

Taraporevala wrote the screenplays for Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala, both directed by Mira Nair. Other projects with Nair include the screenplay for My Own Country, based on the book by Abraham Verghese, as well as The Namesake (2006), a cinematic adaptation of Pulitzer–winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, The Namesake.
Her other produced credits include the film Such a Long Journey based on the novel Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry and directed by Sturla Gunnarson, and the screenplay for the film Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, directed by Jabbar Patel for the Government of India and the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC).
In 2016 she directed a 14-minute documentary virtual reality film Yeh Ballet for Anand Gandhi's Memesys Culture Lab.
In 2020 she wrote and directed a feature film based on her documentary. The Netflix Original film Yeh Ballet produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur and Roy Kapur Films can be seen on Netflix worldwide.

## Photography

In 1982, during a break from college, she met photographer Raghubir Singh, who, after looking at her work, which included photographs of her extended Parsi family, suggested she work on a book about the Parsi community. This started her extensive work of photo documentation of the Parsi community.
   ...she had the eye, the patience, the empathy of a seasoned portraitist; but she also had something even harder to find — a lifelong, unillusioned, affectionate closeness to an entire community whose numbers were dwindling with every passing year (Pico Iyer, in Home in the City, 2017).
In 2000, she self-published Parsis, the Zoroastrians of India: a photographic journey, 1980-2000 about the traditionally closed off community since their persecution in Persia, the first and only visual documentation of the Parsi community. An updated edition was published in 2004.
Her photographs have been exhibited in India, the US, France and Britain, including London's Tate Modern gallery.
She has had solo shows at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai and the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Delhi. Her work is in the permanent collections of the NGMA Delhi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In 2017/2018, the Whitworth in Manchester exhibited her photographic show Home in the City, Bombay 1977 – Mumbai 2017. It was selected by The Guardian as one of UK's top 5 shows.
A larger version of Home in the City with 102 photographs was exhibited at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, from 14 through 31 October 2017. An accompanying book, Home in the city: Bombay 1977 – Mumbai 2017, was released with essays by Pico Iyer and Salman Rushdie. It then traveled to the Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts in Altinho, Goa, opening there on 11 November 2017.

## Filmography

| Year | Film | Director | Writer | Notes |
| 1988 | Salaam Bombay! | No | Yes | |
| 1991 | Mississippi Masala | No | Yes | |
| 1998 | Such a Long Journey | No | Yes | |
| 1998 | My Own Country | No | Yes | Television film |
| 2000 | Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar | No | Yes | |
| 2006 | The Namesake | No | Yes | |
| 2009 | Little Zizou | Yes | Yes | |
| 2020 | Yeh Ballet | Yes | Yes | |

## Awards

* 1988: Lillian Gish Award with Mira Nair, at the Los Angeles Women in Film Festival, for Excellence in Feature Film, for Salaam Bombay!
* 1991: Golden Osella (Best Original Screenplay) 49th Venice International Film Festival: Mississippi Masala
* 2008: Time/Warner Best Screenplay Award at Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council, New York, for Little Zizou
* 2008: Best Director at Mahindra Indo- American Arts Council, New York, for Little Zizou
* 2008: Best Producer at Asian Festival of 1ST Films, Singapore, for Little Zizou
* 2009: Best Director of Experience Section of Levante International Film Festival, Italy, for Little Zizou
* 2009: Audience Choice Award at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, (IFFLA) for Little Zizou
* 2014: Padma Shri by Government of India
* 2020: Filmfare nomination for Best Film Web Original, for Yeh Ballet

## Memberships

* Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2017–present)
* Writers Guild of America (1989–present)