Jury

As the Vice President of Global Television Development at Miramax, Mirsada Abdool Raman oversees the studio’s global portfolio of series content, including Netflix’s hit The Gentlemen by Guy Ritchie, The Key Man with Dev Patel, and the adaptation of The Henna Artist with Freida Pinto. Abdool Raman began her career at CAA. While at Netflix, she developed series You and Ginny & Georgia and led content strategy in India, including Sri Rao’s The Fame Game starring Madhuri Dixit, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi. In 2020, she returned to the U.S. to join Rao in launching his production company, Sri & Company, where she cultivated an original content slate highlighting South Asian talent. Abdool Raman is a New York University Tisch School of the Arts graduate.

Mohammed Ali (Mo) Naqvi produced Netflix’s docu-series Turning Point and received the Emmy Television Academy Honor for directing and producing Showtime’s Shame. Naqvi has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, a Cinema Eye Honor, and the UNESCO Fellini Award. His films have screened at Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, Busan, and Tribeca film festivals. Other documentaries by Naqvi include Among the Believers (PBS World), and Pakistan’s Hidden Shame (Channel 4), as well as the fiction films Big River and I Will Avenge You Iago. Originally from Pakistan, Naqvi is the chairman of the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee and co-founder of The Crescent Film Collective, representing Pakistan’s official presence at the Cannes Film Festival.

Roshan Sethi is a writer, director, and practicing oncologist at Harvard Medical School. He is the co-creator of The Resident, which ran for six seasons on Fox and is now available on Netflix. His directorial debut, 7 Days, won the Independent Spirit Award for best first feature. He subsequently directed World’s Best for Disney+ and co-wrote the abortion drama Call Jane (Roadside), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022. His third film as a director, A Nice Indian Boy (Jonathan Groff, Karan Soni), recently premiered at SXSW Film & TV Festival.

Mumbai-based actress Shriya Pilgaonkar is a versatile, award-winning powerhouse performer in the Indian film industry. Known for her incredible range of performances, she made her Hindi film debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Fan, followed by critically acclaimed and popular films and series like Mirzapur, Guilty Minds, The Broken News, and Taaza Khabar. Her international filmography includes Gurinder Chadha’s series Beecham House, and Claude Lelouch’s French film Un plus une. Pilgaonkar has also co-directed and produced the short documentaries Panchgavya and Dresswala, which have been showcased at international film festivals. 

Francisco Velasquez is the Associate Director of Film Independent’s Project Involve, the signature mentoring program that fosters future generations of visual storytellers to have an inclusive industry. In 2009, Velasquez launched the Project Involve Short Film production component of the program and has executive produced over 80 short films for the organization. He received his B.A. in Latin American Literature and Theatre Arts from Occidental College and his M.F.A. in Film Production at UCLA, where his thesis film Jacaranda received the coveted Bud Yorkin Master Film Fellowship and premiered at New Directors/New Films. 

Terrie Samundra is a director and screenwriter whose debut feature Kaali Khuhi, was released globally in 2020 on Netflix. Her most recent short, Extinction Story Origin Story, premiered at New York’s Anthology Film Archive. Samundra is an alumna of the Sundance Screenwriters and Finance Labs, an SFFILM Kenneth Rainin Screenwriting fellow, a Princess Grace recipient, and a current directing fellow of ReFrame Rise (Sundance Institute and Women in Film). She has recently wrapped the writer’s room for a Netflix project, and is developing an original series with Suitable Pictures. She teaches screenwriting at the American Film Institute.