Roopa Rao

Roopa Rao (born May 18, 1981) is an independent Indian film-maker from Bangalore. She is the writer and director of India's first same-sex love story web series, The Other Love Story (2016). Rao is also known for directing critically acclaimed Kannada film Gantumoote (2019).

Roopa Rao
Born (1981-05-18) 18 May 1981
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
EducationAsian Academy of Film & Television
OccupationFilmmaker
Known forThe Other Love Story
Gantumoote

Early life

Rao completed Masters in Commerce with Public Relations as a specialization and discontinued Masters in Finance. For a span of six Years, she worked at Infosys.[1] Later, with a persistent desire to make movies, she quit her job to pursue film making. She completed a course in film direction and production from Asian Academy of Film and Television, Delhi. After this, she moved to London, UK to assist a documentary filmmaker.[2]

Career

She returned to India, where she made documentaries and short films in order to improvise her craft. After co-directing Vishnuvardhana, a Kannada feature film and Kurai Ondrum Illai, an independent Tamil feature film, she began to work on her first big scale venture, The Other Love Story.[1]

Being a writer at heart from her early teens, she had written the story of two young women falling in love during her college days but never took it further due to its unconventional story-line.[3]

Later, in 2015, she decided to work on it herself. Since the central theme of the story is a taboo topic in India, she had difficulties finding producers for her project and turned to Wishberry, a crowd funding platform to raise an amount of Rs 4 lakh.

The Other Love Story, a love story between two young girls, came on air on 27 August 2016. The first season consists 12 episodes. Set in the 1990s of Bangalore, The Other Love Story, starring Spoorthi Gumaste and Shweta Gupta, explored the journey of two young women in love.

Rao has won "Best Director" award at NYC Web Fest 2016 and "Best Story" award at TO Web Fest 2017. The Other Love Story has a total of 3 wins and 7 nominations from various National and International Film Festivals.[4]

After The Other Love Story, in 2017 Rao wrote and directed BFF (Breath Friend Forever), a short film where a 7-year-old, after learning about trees in class, tries to understand the importance of trees. The film was an official selection in Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and got screened at Ireland National Film Body in Kids Section.

In 2018, Astu Studios released a travel short film Love Leh’tter starring Roopa Rao, written and directed by Surya Vasishta.[5] Rao co-founded an independent production house, Ameyukti Studios, with a friend in 2018.

In 2019, Rao's first feature film, Gantumoote was up for a world premiere at New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) where it won the "Best Screenplay" award. An intense coming off age, high school drama set in Bangalore in the 1990s, it's a relatable story of a sixteen-year-old girl and her subtle journey from the life that she thinks exists just like in the movies to the actual life that unravels to her. A tale of struggles with understanding herself, the changing world, educational pressures, bullying, competition over marks – all of it wrapped up in transcending journey of first love.

Currently, she is working on producing their next venture while also writing a short film inspired from a real life incident.[6]

Filmography
Year Film Role Notes
2009Let LiveDirector, Writer, EditorEnglish-Hindi Short Documentary
2011Hot SeatDirector, WriterKannada Short Film
2011VishnuvardhanaCo-DirectorKannada Feature Film
2013Kurai ondrum IllaiCo-DirectorTamil Feature Film
2014The Night of all NightsResearch Assistant, Line ProducerGerman Documentary
-The Century Of Women-
2016The 'Other' Love StoryDirector, Writer, Co-ProducerWeb series
2017BFF (Breath Friend Forever)Director, Writer, Co-ProducerShort Film
2018Love Leh'tterActorShort Film
2019GantumooteDirector, Writer, ProducerDebut feature film
2020Silent Passage (Pandemic Tales)Director, WriterShort Film

Awards
gollark: Isn't it `shaken`?
gollark: Ah, the DMCA, of *evil*.
gollark: Somewhat late: I'm relatively sure diamonds or diamond-like things are possible to manufacture artificially *anyway*.
gollark: Nobody ever continues my naming schemes, except for two out of what, 453?
gollark: `I couldn't think of a name` / `so I just wrote this` could work on a pair of dragons...

See also

References
  1. "Roopa Rao". LinkedIn.
  2. "Redefining love". theweek.in. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
  3. "Bengaluru-made lesbian web series gets highest nominations at NYC Web Fest". Times of India. Retrieved 24 January 2017.
  4. "Roopa Rao Awards". IMDb.
  5. "Love Leh'tter". Astu Studios.
  6. "The Silver Screen Always Seemed More Real To Me: Roopa Rao". She the People. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.