Roopa Rao
Roopa Rao (born May 18) is an independent Indian film-maker from Bangalore. She is the writer and director of India's first same-sex love story web series, "The Other Love Story" (2016). Rao is also known for directing critically acclaimed award winning Kannada film "Gantumoote" (2019). Early life. Rao completed Masters in Commerce with Personnel Management as a specialization and discontinued Masters in Finance. For a span of six Years, she worked at Infosys. Later, with a persistent desire to make movies, she quit her job to pursue film making. She completed a course in film  direction and production from Asian Academy of Film and Television, Delhi. After this, she moved to London, UK to assist a documentary filmmaker. Career. She returned to India, where she made documentaries and short films in order to improvise her craft. After co-directing "Vishnuvardhana", a Kannada feature film and "Kurai Ondrum Illai", an independent Tamil feature film, she began to work on her first big scale venture, "The Other Love Story". Being a writer at heart from her early teens, she had written the story of two young women falling in love during her college days but never took  it further due to its unconventional story-line. Later, in 2015, she decided to work on it herself. Since the central theme of the story is a taboo topic in India, she had difficulties finding producers for her project and turned to Wishberry, a crowd funding platform to raise an amount of Rs 4 lakh. "The Other Love Story", a love story between two young girls, came on air on 27 August 2016. The first season consists 12 episodes. Set in the late 1990s/early 2000s of Bangalore, "The Other Love Story", starring Spoorthi Gumaste and Shweta Gupta, explored the  journey of two young women in love. Rao has won "Best Director" award at NYC Web Fest 2016 and "Best Story" award at TO Web Fest 2017. "The Other Love Story" has a total of 3 wins and 7 nominations from various National and International Film Festivals. After "The Other Love Story, "in 2017 Rao wrote and directed "BFF (Breath Friend Forever)," a short film where a 7-year-old, after learning about trees in class, tries to understand the importance of trees. The film was an official selection in Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and got screened at Ireland  National Film Body in Kids Section. In 2018, "Astu Studios" released a travel short film "Love Leh’tter" starring Roopa Rao, written and directed by Surya Vasishta. Rao co-founded an independent production house, Ameyukti Studios, with a friend in 2018. In 2019, Rao's first feature film, "Gantumoote" was up for a world premiere at New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) where it won the "Best Screenplay" award. An intense coming off age, high school drama set in Bangalore in the 1990s, it's a relatable story of a sixteen-year-old girl and her subtle journey from the life  that she thinks exists just like in the movies to the actual life that unravels to her. A tale of struggles with understanding herself, the changing world, educational pressures, bullying, competition over marks – all of it wrapped up in transcending journey of first love. Currently, she is working on producing their next venture while also writing a feature film inspired from a real life incident. References. 7.https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/bollywood/critics-choice-film-awards-2020-complete-nominations-list-6295588/ 8.https://www.cinisuddi.com/tag/raghavendra-chitravani-awards/ 9. https://siima.in/2019-nominations.php