Biography
Shilpi Gulati is a filmmaker, scholar and educator whose work explores the political and imaginative possibilities of documentary practice. Her research is grounded in practice-led methodologies that move between non-fiction filmmaking, critical pedagogy, and community-based media. Through her films she engages with questions of gender, memory and identity and focuses on feminist approaches to storytelling in South Asia. She is a two-time recipient of the President’s National Film Award for her documentaries Qissa-e Parsi (2014) and Taala Te Kunjee (2018). She was a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University (2018–19) and a Getting Real Fellow with the International Documentary Association (2024–25). Shilpi's engagement with the field extends to programming and jury work across national and international film festival. Recently, she served as Festival Director of the 13th Cut.in Students Film Festival (2026), India’s longest-running platforms for student and early-career filmmakers, and the Digital Disruptions Film Festival (2024), which focused on low cost digital technologies. In these roles, she has led and trained postgraduate students in collaborative programming and exhibition making. Alongside her practice, research and curatorial work, Shilpi consults as a creative producer across fiction and non-fiction projects, supporting early career filmmakers through editorial development, financing, outreach and distribution. She is also engaged in mentoring initiatives with PSBT Doc Commune, Video Consortium’s SSP Asia and the International Association of Women in Radio and Television.