Indrani(III)

Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri, known mononymously as Indrani, is an Academy Award-shortlisted film director, acclaimed fashion photographer, Princeton-trained anthropologist, and future systems strategist. Discovered by David Bowie, with whom she collaborated for over a decade, her cinematic work moves between mythology and regeneration, exploring identity, power, human rights, and humanity’s relationship with the living Earth. Her films, images, and global campaigns have reached more than four billion views.

Indrani’s work has received more than 50 international awards and honors, including two Cannes Gold Lions, the Tribeca Film Festival Disruptive Innovation Award, CNN Exposé Best Picture, and the Lucie Awards’ Best of Show. Tribeca described her as "a leading director and voice for female empowerment." Her film "The Great Artist," exploring artistic brilliance, childhood trauma, and mental health, was shortlisted for the 93rd Academy Awards. She is a UN Women’s Entrepreneurship Distinguished Fellow, recipient of Rotary International’s Max Mark-Cranbrook Global Peacemaker Award, and illuminem Thought Leader of the Year in Sustainable Lifestyles.

Indrani directed David Bowie’s "Valentine’s Day," a psychologically charged exploration of a school mass shooter featured in the HBO and BBC documentary "David Bowie: The Last Five Years." She directed Alicia Keys’ "New Day" and "Digital Death," the global HIV/AIDS film and stills campaign starring Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams, and others, which raised more than $2 million in under a week. She has photographed and filmed defining works with Bowie, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Mariah Carey.

Indrani’s narrative films are distinguished by their mythic visual language and reinvention of inherited stories through ecological, female, and culturally plural perspectives. She wrote and directed "The Legend of Lady White Snake," starring Daphne Guinness, reimagining an ancient Asian legend by reversing a poem by Neil Gaiman and exploring gendered power and trans-species metamorphosis. It received Best Film and Best Director honors at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the London Fashion Film Festival.

She wrote and directed "Till Human Voices Wake Us," a docu-fantasy starring Lindsay Lohan and produced by Rick Schwartz ("Black Swan," "Gangs of New York"). Inspired by Celtic Selkie mythology and T. S. Eliot, it connects gender, violence, and the destruction of the oceans. It won Best Picture, Best of New York, and Best Director. Her avant-garde city symphony "Manhatta" counter-colonizes the gaze through the poetry of Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay.

Her human-rights drama "Reunited" won Best Direction, Best Human Rights Film, and Best Short Film. "The Girl Epidemic" confronts trafficking and female infanticide and received CNN Exposé Best Picture; Forbes praised Indrani’s direction as "riveting and provocative." She wrote and directed "Crescendo," using football and magical realism to empower girls in India, with music produced by Pharrell Williams, and directed "Girl Rising India," featuring Priyanka Chopra, Freida Pinto, and Alia Bhatt in a film and campaign that became central to India’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao initiative. She also directed "Be the Subject Not the Object."

Indrani is directing the in-progress "The Regeneration Generation," a feature-length mythic documentary epic co-created with Indigenous leaders, Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC scientists, and an Academy Award-recognized producing team. Filmed across six continents, it follows Amazonian leaders from the burning rainforest to the halls of global power, bringing ancestral knowledge into dialogue with climate science, regenerative economics, technology, innovation, and humanity’s possible futures.

As founder and CEO of Double Exposure Studios, Indrani has shaped more than 300 global brands and cultural leaders. She was the subject and co-executive producer of Bravo/NBC’s six-part reality series "Double Exposure," featuring appearances by Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, and Armie Hammer. She also co-hosted "The Accutron Show" and co-created and co-hosted the anthropology series "Sacred Realms."

Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, Centre Pompidou, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Lincoln Center presented her book and exhibition "ICONS," positioning her work "at the crossroads of pop culture and critical acclaim." She is co-author of "ICONS: Celebrity Exposures of Markus + Indrani" and "Bioplanning V.01: A New Design Discipline." The latter was launched at Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology in New York. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair.

US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith observed that Indrani "uses art as a means of processing and reflecting upon questions of self and society, justice and hope, history and myth," making political and ecological questions felt through intellect, beauty, passion, grief, and the possibility of transformation.

An Indian-born British-Canadian artist, Indrani was raised in India, where she volunteered with Mother Teresa. An internationally successful teen model-actress, she transformed her family home in India into a school at eighteen, laying the foundation for Shakti Regeneration Institute. A magna cum laude Princeton graduate in cultural anthropology, she now serves as CEO of SRI, leading its work in education, media, women’s empowerment, Indigenous leadership, and biocultural regeneration.

Indrani is founder of Open Origin, developing future systems strategies across sustainable AI, energy, and planetary resilience. She co-led an XPRIZE Rainforest semifinalist team and was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton. She lectures at Harvard and Yale, is a TEDx speaker on "Can Art Save Humanity?", and convenes the Science Summit at the United Nations General Assembly.