Sanjna Selva

About

Sanjna Selva (she/her) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in New York City who is experienced in all aspects of video production. She has a proven track record of capturing quality, emotive footage, scripting, and building out a complex story at the edit bay with both tight turnarounds and longer lead times. Her work has been featured on PBS, CBS New York, EST Media, Defense News, and the International Center of Photography. Her directorial debut, "Call Me Anytime, I’m Not Leaving the House," about two sisters separated by the war in Ukraine, was acquired by PBS for broadcast on POV Shorts—and was also the first film to receive two broadcasts since the start of the program’s five season run. Her work has screened at numerous festivals and spaces including DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Woodstock Film Festival, DC DOX, and Indie Memphis Film Festival within the U.S., as well as at film festivals in France, Italy, Romania, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, where it has received best short documentary and audience awards. Sanjna is a graduate of the M.S. program in journalism with a specialization in documentary film at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a 2020 Double Exposure Film Festival grantee, and a 2019 Skidmore-MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute fellow. She is also a member of A-DOC, the Asian American Journalists Association, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and Video Consortium. Sanjna is presently working on her next documentary, "Spa City Revolutionary," which investigates a resurgence of police and FBI surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists post-George Floyd in small-town America—a town she lived in for five years. She is also producing a feature documentary that explores the loneliness of dissent amidst the erosion of democracy in India, and the incredible courage it takes for minorities and dissidents to push back and survive. Camera experience: Sony: FX6, FS7, FS5, A7iii; Canon: C300, XF100, Mark series. Software: (high proficiency) Adobe Premiere, Photoshop; Adobe Audition, After Effects Languages: (fluent) English, Malay; (working) Arabic, Nepali. Contact: sanjna@aubinpictures.com