Biography

Shazia Iqbal is an Indian Writer/ Director based in Mumbai. Her first feature film, Dhadak 2 is lauded as a landmark film for unapologetically talking about Caste and Dalit politics in mainstream Hindi cinema. She won the best debut Director at the 30th Sao Paulo International Shorts Film Festival for her critically acclaimed short film, Bebaak. The film premiered at Indian Film festival of Los Angeles and was screened at MOCA-Grand, Los Angeles under the programme ‘The new wave of South Asian Cinema’. Bebaak went on to win several International and Indian State and Critics’ award.

Her feature film script, Momo’s First Wedding was selected by the prestigious lab, Produire Au Sud for DIFF 2023. Iqbal has also written and directed a Docu-fiction episode, Homecoming for Amazon Prime video’s anthology series, Love Storiyaan, which talks about real-life couples surviving Indian society’s forbidden ideas of love. Her episode was critically acclaimed and most watched episode of the series.

She is an Alumni for Film Independent’s Global Media Maker’s Screenwriting lab conducted in Los Angeles in 2019. She is also one of the protagonist in CBC’s Canadian documentary, Women beyond Bollywood, which talks about Indian women reshaping the film industry and changing its stereotypes. Before venturing into filmmaking, she worked as a Production Designer for fifteen years; She has designed International Emmy nominated, India’s first original Netflix series, Sacred Games (I & II) and International Emmy nominated mini-series Lust Stories. She has designed and art directed over hundred TV commercials.

She has been on several panels talking about various issues like Censorship, Women in Cinema, Representation of minorities in films.
- IMDb mini biography by: Shazia Iqbal