

Boris Mitić
Guest lecture
Born in 1977 in southern Serbia. Lived on a few continents, worked for a few years for the most prestigious global media, understood a few things and dedicated the rest of his life to creative parenting, creative football and creative documentaries: a Gypsy Mad Max recycling saga, a claustrophobic tragicomedy of the
absurd, a satirical documentary fairy tale, a feel good parable about Nothing.
250+ festivals (Locarno, IDFA, Edinburgh, Abu Dhabi FF, Mar del Plata FF, Jerusalem FF),
20 broadcasters (ARTE, SVT, YLE, VPRO, RAI, Al Jazeera), 18 awards (Sarajevo, Madrid, Rome,
Mexico, Montevideo...), global lecturing track record (Edinburgh, Beirut, Doha, Kolkata,
Copenhagen, Moscow, Geneva, Sofia, Sarajevo, Florence, Bergen, Shanghai, London, Taipei).
Filmography:
Pretty Dyana (2003)
Unmik Titanik (2004)
Goodbye, How Are You? (2009)
In Praise of Nothing (2017)
www.dribblingpictures.com

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.

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.

Payal Kapadia
Guest lecture
Payal Kapadia, an FTII alumna, is a prominent voice in contemporary Indian cinema. Her debut fiction feature “All We Imagine As Light” won Grand Prix at Cannes, 2024. In 2021, “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” earned her the prestigious Golden Eye award at Cannes. In 2017, her short film “Afternoon Clouds” was the sole Indian
selection at the Cannes Film Festival, and featured in the Cinefondation section. Her experimental short film “And What Was the Summer Saying” premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2018, where it received the Special Jury Prize. It also garnered acclaim at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2018 and was honored as the Best Experimental Film at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2020.
Her work delves into the less visible, often hidden realms of memory and dreams. It is within the realm of minor, fleeting feminine gestures that she seeks to uncover the truths that define her practice.

Ranabir Das
Guest lecture
Ranabir Das is a cinematographer based in Mumbai, India. He graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India. His recent cinematographic work “All We Imagine as Light” (directed by Payal Kapadia) won the Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. His first feature film as a cinematographer, “The Shepherdess and the
Seven Songs," premiered at the Berlinale in 2020. His second film, "A Night of Knowing Nothing," premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes in 2021 and won the "L'œil d'or." His short film "The Last Mango Before the Monsoon," directed by Payal Kapadia, premiered at the Short Film Festival of Oberhausen in 2015.

Saumyananda Shahi
Guest lecture
Guest Lecture
Born in Bangalore, Saumyananda Sahi originally studied philosophy at St Stephens College in Delhi before deciding he wanted to be a cinematographer, attending the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.
Over the past decade, Saumyananda has worked on a variety of projects, both factual and fiction, with such filmmakers as Kamal Swaroop, Shaunak Sen, Prateek Vats, Arun Karthick, Anamika Haksar, Thomas F Lennon and Prashant Nair. His work has played at film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Rotterdam, Locarno, Busan, Toronto, Hot Docs (Canada) and IDFA (Holland). He was nominated for an Asia Pacific Award (Balekempa, 2018), a 2021 Filmfare Award and, more recently, a 2023 Critics Choice Award for Best Cinematography.
His most recent work includes the documentary ‘All That Breathes’ (nominated for both a BAFTA as well as an Academy Award, and winner of the ASC Award for Best Documentary) and the Netflix limited series ‘Trial By Fire’, which opened to rave reviews and features on IMDb’s Top 100 list.
In 2022 Saumyananda was selected as one of the ten participants of BAFTA’s Breakthrough India programme. Film Companion also selected Saumyananda as one of India’s ‘Disruptors’ for the year 2022.
As well as his work as a cinematographer, Saumyananda has directed two documentaries and is presently completing his debut fiction feature as a director.
As a teacher, he has conducted workshops at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute of India, BITS Pilani (Goa), and NYU Abu Dhabi.

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