Biography

Sanjna Selva (she/her) is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist with a knack for shaping complex narratives about social issues into compelling stories. She has lived and worked in Malaysia, Singapore, Nepal, New York, New Orleans, Tunisia, and London.

She began her career working on the Sundance-supported documentary Silent Beauty which had its world premiere in 2022 at the Hot Docs Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the BlackStar Film Festival.

Her directorial debut, the short documentary Call Me Anytime, I'm Not Leaving the House, had its world premiere at the 2022 Woodstock Film Festival where it received an honorable mention from the jury. It will broadcast nationally on PBS' POV Shorts program in November 2022, being the first film to receive two broadcasts since the start of the program's five season-run. Sanjna developed the film, which she also solo-produced, shot, and edited, as a graduate student at the Columbia Journalism School. She is presently working on her next documentary film called Spa City Revolutionary, which investigates police and FBI surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists in small-town America.

Sanjna was born and raised between Malaysia and Singapore before moving to the U.S. to attend college. She graduated from Skidmore College with a B.A. in International Relations and Columbia University with an M.S. in Journalism, specializing in documentary film.

Her work has been featured in CBS New York, EST Media, Defense News, the International Center of Photography (ICP), and MediaStorm. She has been supported by the Double Exposure Film Festival, the Skidmore MDOCS Storytellers' Institute, and the South Asian Journalists Association. She is also a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and Film Fatales.
- IMDb mini biography by: Sanjna Selva