Miriam Chandy Menacherry

Miriam Chandy Menacherry (born 9 March 1975) is an award-winning Keralite documentary filmmaker and producer based in Mumbai, India. She has her own production house, Filament Pictures established in 2005, that produces socially relevant short films. She has been the recipient of national and international awards for her documentaries. Her documentary, Rat Race (2011) was the winner of the Mipdoc Co-Production Challenge at Cannes (France). Miriam has also won the Asian Television Awards for Best Social Documentary (2007) and the UK Environment Film Fellowship (2008).
==Early life and education==
Miriam was born in Chennai. She did her schooling at Bangalore. She graduated from Stella Maris College, Chennai with a B.Sc (Honors). She has a post-graduate degree in Film and Television from the A.J.K. Mass Communication Research Centre, New Delhi. 
Miriam Chandy started her career as a correspondent for CNBC, India and then moved on to UTV, Factual programming. Filament Pictures was established in 2005 to follow her passion to make meaningful cinema catering to a worldwide audience.
==Documentaries==
Back to the Floor (2004) was a series directed by Miriam Chandy for the BBC World. This was the Indian edition of the award-winning British series by the same name Back to the Floor. The Indian edition featured top management from the leading business houses in India working at the shop level to gain a different perspective on the challenges faced by their employees. It has won the India Television Awards for Best Business Series.
The Stuntmen of Bollywood (2005) was Miriam’s directorial venture produced for the National Geographic Channel. The documentary features the lives and hardships faced by the stunt doubles in Bollywood. It was nominated for 'most innovative’ film at the Asian Television Awards.
Mee Koli (2005) is a documentary about the Koli fishermen of Mumbai, the original settlers of the city and their fight to preserve the delicate web of marine life that sustains their livelihood.
A documentary that verges on the border of science fiction, Robot Jockey (2007) explores the juncture in the life of the Bedouin camel racers in Qatar when they had to train their camels to accept metallic riders. On facing international backlash for using child jockeys in camel racing, Qatar decided to silence the criticism by switching to robot jockeys. This film won the Asian Television Awards for Best Social Documentary in 2008.
Meeting the energy needs of a community without resorting to vandalising nature – A Light Burns (2008) is about the difficulties faced by a remote community in Jharkhand to bring electricity to their village. The film follows the journey of the community to produce biodiesel from locally available oil seeds. It won the UK Environment Film Fellowship.
The Rat Race (2011) documents the lives of the rat-killers in Mumbai who work whilst the city sleeps. The central node of the story is an aspiring Bollywood dancer who turns to rat-catching for various reasons and spends the next 37 years killing rats and supervising other rat-catchers. This documentary was the winner of the Mipdoc Co-Production Challenge, Cannes (France), Audience Awards, Florence (Italy) and Kerala (India). The documentary also premiered at IDFA, Amsterdam (Netherlands).
Lyari Notes (2015) is a coming-of-age story of four young girls in Karachi. Living in Lyari, an area known for gang warfare, they make the decision to choose music over violence. This is a unique project in that two filmmakers from India and Pakistan come together to produce a political discourse through the media of music and film. The documentary was the winner of the IDPA Long form Documentary Award (Silver). It was nominated by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists for the EDA Award at IDFA (Netherlands), and the youth jury award at Sheffield (UK). Lyari Notes was the opening film at the Artists cinema package at the Kochi Biennale (India), and the Indie Meme International Festival in Austin, Texas (USA).
Miriam Chandy is known for films that celebrate everyday heroes. From the Shadows is her next project and has been selected for the Lisbon Docs Pitch (Portugal), Docedge (India), Global Media Makers Program (USA), Docs Port Incheon (Korea), Global Pitch Sunny Side of the Docs (France), Good Pitch (India), and Impact Day FIFDH (Geneva). This short film portrays the victims of child sex trafficking in India and is in the final stages of production. Both, From the Shadows and Lyari Notes were funded partly through crowdsourcing.
Miriam not only directs her films, but she also does the production, and occasionally forays into scriptwriting and distribution since documentary film making do not have the same acceptance and financial backing that feature films do in India. Of Malayali lineage, Miriam has a feature film based on the cultural and social space of Kerala in the offing.
==Filmography==
* 2004 – Back to the Floor for BBC World (Director) 
* 2005 – Stuntmen of Bollywood for National Geographic Channel (Director) 
* 2005 – Mee Koli (Director) 
* 2007 – Robot Jockey for National Geographic Channel (Director/Producer) 
* 2008 – A Light Burns for Discovery Channel and Doordarshan (Director) 
* 2011 – The Rat Race (Director/Producer) 
* 2015 – Lyari Notes (Director/Producer) 
* 2016-2021 – From the Shadows (Director/Producer) is a work in progress. 
==In the media==
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Category:1975 births
Category:Indian documentary filmmakers
Category:Indian film producers
Category:Stella Maris College, Chennai alumni