Gregory Francis believes in celebrating real life experiences in his narrations, which is exactly how he landed a place in the My Melbourne team in 2020 with the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne. As a former journalist with Times Internet, and previously freelancing for Architectural Digest India, Grazia.co.in and others, he developed a penchant for creative writing landing him into the profession of social media marketing. His love for interacting with people helps him pen down narratives resonating with real-life struggles, happy moments- capturing incidents the audience can relate with. He is after all a storyteller.
Monique Nair is a Melbourne/Naarm-based writer and editor of Indian-Italian-Polish heritage exploring diaspora experiences, coming-of-age narratives and questions of identity and meaning. She is the co-editor of Mascara Literary Review’s anthology Resilience published with Ultimo Press. She participated in the West Writers program with Footscray Community Arts and is a screenwriter for My Melbourne, a VicScreen and Mind Blowing Films international short film initiative. She holds a First Class Honours in Creative Writing and a Graduate Diploma of Psychology. Her writing has been published with Peril and The Indian Weekly and she has performed poetry for the Emerging Writers Festival.
Nazifa Amiri was born in Herat Afghanistan and resettled in Australia in October 2021. She studied civil engineering and economy in Afghanistan. She was headmaster of Herat women's Cricket and worked with Herat youth organization and Afghan for progressive thinking. She joined Afghanistan national Cricket team in 2020.
She enjoys creative writing and sharing her lived experience.
Samira Cox is 21 years old. She lives with Usher syndrome which means she was born profoundly deaf; she has some balance difficulties and retinitis pigmentosa and is now legally blind (but she still has good central vision!). She has cochlear implants which allow her to hear and enjoy music.
She started to get into filmmaking when she attended a filmmaking workshop with Hear For You which mentors deaf teenagers. She started to enter their annual film festival and has won awards for Best Screenplay, Best Story, and one year her short film “What Am I Missing” was selected to be shown in Hearing Australia Offices. She also produced a short film for my HSC Major Artwork which included an animated character.
In all these films she was a screenwriter, director, editor, and actor. She loves creating her own short films.
Shivangi Bhowmick is a Melbourne-based Indian-Australian writer. Discovering a passion for story-telling during the pandemic, she has since worked on a range of writing projects, navigating unique migrant perspectives and young adult themes. Shivangi continues to write with the hope of reinforcing South-Asian representation in entertainment and looks forward to the fruition of her future writing projects.
Param Walia, a creative and performance-driven aspiring filmmaker with an excellent eye for detail, deep passion for storytelling, supporting teams, and knowledge of all stages of the filmmaking process - Winner of the IFFM 2022 WorldRemit Short Film Competition.
Puneet Gulati, actor, recording artist, host and writer. Puneet has produced, scripted and co-directed his first short, Cafe Choice which premiered at IFFM 2020.
Ron Kahlon, with three years of experience in the film industry, Ron worked on various Australian and Indian productions which includes short films and music videos.
Samira Cox, 21 and lives with Usher syndrome. She is deaf and legally blind. Samira got into filmmaking through Hear For You, which mentors deaf teenagers and started a film festival. She won Best Screenplay for her HSC Major Artwork, made an animated film and now studies Screen and Media at TAFE.
Tammy Yang, an emerging filmmaker/creative producer, has a great interest in intercultural topics and authentic stories from different cultures and communities.
William Duan is an emerging independent filmmaker. As a queer Chinese-Australian, he is inspired by stories heralding from other queer and cultural diasporas - particularly those from Asian voices.
Brad Francis, an award-winning cinematographer with 13 years of experience based and working throughout Australia and internationally.
Anmol Kachroo | Payal Lakothia | Tammy Yang | Vedant Sawhney | Vrund Shah