Nisha Pahuja
Nisha Pahuja is a freelance filmmaker, writer, producer, and researcher. Her third film, The World Before Her, won the World Documentary Competition Award at Tribeca Film Festival, where it premiered. The film depicts two young women who live miles apart but also worlds away—contestants in the Miss India pageant in Mumbai and the young women at a fundamentalist Hindu camp in nearby Aurangabad. The film is a meditation on the nature of women’s empowerment in an India still dominantly patriarchal.
Pahuja was born in India but raised in Canada, and now divides her time between Toronto and Mumbai. Her other acclaimed documentaries are Bollywood Bound (2003) and Diamond Road (2007). Her visit was sponsored by the Dhar India Studies Program and IU Cinema.