Deepak Rauniyar
Deepak Rauniyar is a writer, director, and producer. The first Nepali filmmaker with a work selected for a major global film festival, his debut feature Highway screened at Berlinale 2012 and Locarno Film Festival. Before this film, Rauniyar worked as a writer and producer for BBC Media Action in Nepal. He wrote and directed several episodes of a BBC drama series, Sweet Tales of Sarangi (BBC Global Reith Award for the Best Non-English output of the year 2009). In 2010, Rauniyar co-founded Aadi Production along with his wife/actor, writer Asha Magrati. Their second feature, White Sun premiered at the 2016 Venice International Film Festival. The film was Nepal’s official selection for 90th Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film and won several awards, including the Interfilm award at the Venice Film Festival, Best Asian Feature at Singapore, New Voices/New Visions Grand Jury Prize at Palm Springs, and four prizes at Fribourg Film Festival. In 2017, The New York Times listed Rauniyar among “The 9 New Directors You Need to Watch”. Rauniyar is an alumnus of the Toronto and Berlinale Talent Campuses and the Cannes Cinéfondation program and has served as a jury member at Locarno and Sydney Film Festivals and Asia Pacific Screen Awards. He is director of the Gograha Film Workshop in Nepal and an assistant professor for film studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, in the United States.
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