Heejung Oh

Guest lecture

Heejung Oh is a prominent and dynamic producer of documentaries and fiction films and the founder of Seesaw Pictures (2017). She grew up in South Korea, and her life is divided between Seoul and Amsterdam/Paris. She is an alumna of EAVE, Eurodoc, Rotterdam Lab, and Berlinale Talents, and has been

invited to the selection committee of IDFA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, DOK Leipzig, and AIDC.

The films produced by her company include “Pearl of the Desert” (IDFA 2019) and “Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters’ Plot” (Berlinale 2020), “Queer My Friends” (Hotdocs 2022), “Delivery Dancer’s Sphere” (IFFR 2023), and co-production titles such as “Nam June Paik Project” (Sundance 2023), “Dragon Women” (Vision du Réel 2022), and many more.
As a sales company, Seesaw Pictures represents “The One Who Runs Away Is the Ghost,” which was selected for IDFA International Competition 2021, and “About Love,” which received awards at many festivals, including Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018 and was acquired by POV and MUBI worldwide. She loves working with young and seasoned filmmakers who have artistic visions and powerful questions.

Surabhi Sharma

Guest lecture

Surabhi has been an independent filmmaker making feature-length documentaries and short films since 2000. Her documentaries, fiction, and video installations engage with cities in transition using the lens of labor, music, and migration. Her works have been screened at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival,

Dubai International Film Festival, MAMI Mumbai Film Festival amongst others. Her film Bidesia in Bambai was nominated for Best Documentary at the 8th Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Her films have been recognized
and awarded at Eco-Cinema, Greece (The Ramsar-Medwet Award), Film South Asia,Kathmandu; Karachi Film Festival; and The Festival of Three Continents, Buenos Aires. She has also created video installations that have been exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London; nGbK, Berlin, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture and the 11th Shanghai Biennale.

Surabhi is Associate Professor of Practice and heads the Film and New Media program at the New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE

 

Arya Rothe

Guest mentor

Arya Rothe is an independent filmmaker from Pune, India, and co-founder of NoCut Film Collective. Her debut feature-length documentary film A Rifle and a Bag (2020, India, Romania, Italy, Qatar) won the Special Mention of the Jury at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in the in the Bright Future Competition.

The film received support from prominent documentary funds, including the DMZ Docs Fund, Creative Media Europe, Netherlands Film Funds, and others.

Her short documentary film Casa da Quina (2015) had its World Premiere at DocLisboa and won the Special Mention Jury Award at the International Film Festival FILMADRID in Spain. Her short film made in Hungary, Daughter’s Mother (2018) had its world premiere at the 61st Dok Leipzig Film Festival. She graduated in 2016 from the DocNomads Master Course. Before DocNomads, she studied at FAMU – National Film School of the Czech Republic.

Lipika Singh Darai

Mentor

Lipika Singh Darai is a director, writer, and editor based in Odisha. Trained in sound recording and design from the FTII, Lipika left the Mumbai film industry around 2013 to make her own films in her home state where she belongs to the Ho indigenous community.
Despite Odisha having a limited scope in independent filmmaking at that time, Lipika has thrived with her films earning multiple National Film Awards and festival participation worldwide.
 
Her credits as director include socio-cultural feature documentaries Some Stories Around Witches (2016) and Backstage (2021), educational short The Waterfall (2017), and as editor The Sound Man Mangesh Desai (2017). Her recent documentary Night and Fear (2023) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in its Ammodo Tiger Short competition. Lipika is developing her debut fiction feature Birdwoman which has received the Hubert Bals Development Fund 2023.
 

Mehdi Jahan

Guest lecture

Mehdi Jahan is a filmmaker and educator from Guwahati, Assam. His work challenges conventional image production methods by drawing from regional oral storytelling traditions. He creates a sensorial aesthetic that blends personal and collective histories, resulting in a cinematic language akin to poetry and dreams.

Mehdi’s films have been featured at prominent international and national festivals and exhibitions. These include events in Brazil, Moscow, Spain, Italy, Peru, Romania, and India. He has also taught film studies and direction at institutions like Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute and Seamedu Media School.

In 2023, his work was featured in his first retrospective at the Millennium Film Workshop in New York. Mehdi is the recipient of the 2023 Berlin Fellowship in the Film and Media Arts category, awarded by Junge Akademie, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

 

Sachin

Mentor

Sachin is a Rajasthan-based filmmaker whose practice engages with oral histories, folklore, local knowledge systems, and socio-ecological realities through nonfiction and experimental cinematic forms. Coming from an agrarian family, Sachin is deeply invested in exploring rural landscapes, agricultural practices, ecological memory, and their interconnectedness with cultural and environmental transformations.

He is an alumnus of DocNomads, Interaction Serbia, Taiwan Pitch, SUPVA Rohtak, and the Central University of Rajasthan. His films have been screened internationally at festivals including IDFA, Vision du Réel, DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, IFFI Goa, Dharamshala International Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, MAMI and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, among others.

Sachin’s filmography includes several nonfiction and experimental films across directing, cinematography, editing, and producing. His recent feature project was part of Vision du Réel´s Development Lab 2026. Alongside his filmmaking practice, he works as a visiting faculty member and workshop facilitator at institutions including Ashoka University and State University of Performing and Visual Arts, while continuing to work through initiatives such as rohī collective and Rajasthan Film Collective to foster conversations around regional cinema and community-based film culture.

Siddhant Sarin

Mentor

Siddhant Sarin is a national award-winning filmmaker & educator from India. A co-founder of Docustan, his films explore the quotidian lives of people through observational methods. With an intimate and delicate approach, he traverses the interplay between individuals’ internal and external worlds.

He received support from the Asian Cinema Fund (Busan), Docedge, EIDF, and the Lithuanian Film Centre for his national award-winning film ‘Ayena (Mirror)’. His films ‘Ayena (Mirror)’, ‘Mum’, and ‘A Happy Place’ have earned acclaim at festivals such as the Krakow Film Festival, Guanajuato, Fipadoc, DOK.fest Munich, DokuBaku, IDSFFK, , Kino Pavasaris, among others. He represents his production company Téh Films, which brought together the world’s first Indian–Lithuanian–South Korean co-production team for his debut feature ‘Ayena (Mirror)’. ‘Ayena (Mirror)’ is showcased on Channel 4 (UK), Asian Docs (Japan) and DAFilms worldwide. A scholarship graduate of the DocNomads Master’s Program, he previously studied cinematography at DFFB (Berlin) and FAMU (Prague). Before pursuing filmmaking, he completed his law degree at the Government Law College, Mumbai. He envisions author-driven works that are both reflective and socially resonant.

Scroll to Top