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SELECTED PRESS & INTERVIEWS

International Documentary Magazine, “Exclusive: Center for Asian American Media Announces Second Cohort of Building Bridges Documentary Fund Grantees,” November, 2025

Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles Reveals Industry Days Line Up, with Netflix, HBO, Universal Among Participating Companies (Exclusive),

Variety, by Naman Ramachandran, 2026

Dialogue with Ambarien Alqadar, Women in Film, Asia, 2026    

 

Land of Dreams featured in Priyanka Dasgupta, “People’s Film Fest to Screen Tales of Resilience from Immigrants’ Lives,” The Times of India, 2006

Seattle’s Tasveer Film Market Unveils 40+ South Asian Projects for Inaugural Edition (EXCLUSIVE)" Variety, by Naman Ramachandran, 2004

Lab Winners for Screenwriting Excellence The Writer’s Ink, “With her film Nisa, Ambarien takes us through the joys, laughter, dreams and aspirations of Muslim women, and counters a narrative of victimhood.”, 2023

Veil of Freedom, Spotify for Podcasters, Available on Apple Podcast & Spotify, 2023

Limiting or Liberating? A Collection of Essays on the Hijab and the Politics Surrounding It. Financial Express, ​Shah, Shubhangi. July 30, 2023

Wall Stories: The Calligrapher of Old Delhi, University of Pennsylvania, Wolf Humanities Center, 2023

Second Sunday Culture Films, Wall Stories and The Calligrapher of Old Delhi, Archeological Institute of America, 2023

Loss and Transience: Vision Mix UK, 2021

Athena Screenwriting Lab Participants Announced, Women and Hollywood, 2019

Elephants in the Dark, Refractions in Muslim Identity, University of Pennsylvania, Middle East Center, Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia

British Film Institute, World Cinema section- New Films from Asian Diaspora

SELECTED ARTIST TALKS

QueerFrames Screenwriting Labs, presenting on the development of Nisa alongside Alankrita Shrivastava (Lipstick Under My Burkha, Bombay Begums), Saim Sadiq (Joyland, Cannes Jury Prize), and Fawzia Mirza (The Queen of My Dreams, Signature Move), 2024

Erasure and Visibility: Working Notes on Sultana's Dream. The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, 2023

Forum on Heritage, Penn Museum Culture Films & Wolf Center for Humanities, 2023

Finding/Funding the Creative Self as part of the Brooklyn Raga Massive and Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) series Uncovered/Recovered: Subcontinent on the Hudson, exploring South Asian migrations, labor, and creative life in New York, 12 Days in a Taxi, 2022

Writing/Walking, Conversation with cinematographer & filmmaker R.V. Ramani guest alongwith filmmakers Payal Kapadia, Saba Dewan, Rajula Shah, Aparna Subramanian, and Hemant Gaba, 2021

Filming the Muslim Woman, Conversation with journalist Teresa Rehman, 2021

Decolonizing Documentary and Building Solidarity in South Asia, International Documentary Association, Getting Real 2020. Panel moderated by Anam Abbas, alongside Anoma Rajakaruna, Arun Bhattarai, Deepti Gupta, Meenakshi Shedde, 2020

Making of Ghetto Girl: In Conversation with noted Indian writer, Urvashi Butalia, Ashoka University

Our Lives to Live: International Association of Women in Radio and Television, Goethe Institute, New Delhi, 2015

Art Creates Change, Kym Preusse Lecture, Ontario College of Art & Design & York, University, Toronto, Canada

Women, Conflict and Filmmaking, The Open Frame Film Festival, New Delhi, India

SELECTED SCHOLARLY CITATIONS

The Ghetto Girl, Shweta Kishore and Kunal Ray, eds., Resistance in Indian Documentary Film: Aesthetics, Culture and Practice, Edinburgh University Press, 2024

 

Who Can Speak of Men? (2002) discussed as a primary case study in Rushaan Kumar, “Toward a ‘Freedom Life’: Notes on Transmasculine Placemaking in the ‘World-Class’ City of New Delhi,” Men and Masculinities 27, no. 4 SAGE Publications, 2024

12 Days in a Taxi, the South Asian Diaspora Film Guide, New York University Libraries Research Guides

The Ghetto Girl,  Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Stanford University Press, 2018

The Ghetto Girl, Nadja-Christina Schneider, “Filming Urban Spaces and Entangled (Im)mobilities,” Studying Youth, Media and Gender in Post-Liberalization India, Frank & Timme, 2015

Four Women and a Room , Nadja-Christina Schneider, “Filming Urban Spaces and Entangled (Im)mobilities,” Studying Youth, Media and Gender in Post-Liberalization India, Frank & Timme, 2015

Who Can Speak of Men? ,  Nadja-Christina Schneider, “Filming Urban Spaces and Entangled (Im)mobilities,” Studying Youth, Media and Gender in Post-Liberalization India, Frank & Timme, 2015

The Ghetto Girl taught in “Critical Concepts in Contemporary Arts,” Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, instructor Juan Orrantia, 2016

Who Can Speak of Men? in module “Muslim Lives: Autobiography, History, Identity” as part of the unit “Film as Autobiography,” Loughborough University, UK, Dr. Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, 2014–15

The Ghetto Girl in Dr. Sabeena Gadihoke, “Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary,” in The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary, ed. Alisa Lebow (Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2012

Who Can Speak of Men? (2002) used and cited in Elakshi Kumar’s doctoral dissertation research, Apprehending Female Masculinity: Nationalism, Liberalization and Gender Nonconformity in North India, University of Minnesota, 2015

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