Priya Vashist is a filmmaker and an Assistant Professor of Film at Old Dominion University. Priya’s film work focuses on social justice and representation of queer South Asian immigrants on screen. Priya’s films and screenplays have won awards at and have been featured at several national and international film festivals and conferences such as Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, Flickers Rhode Island Film Festival, and Nashville Film Festival. Priya is one of the founding board members of Virginia Queer Film Festival. Priya received her MFA in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University.

Pooja Chawla is a Playwright, Actress, and Theater Educator who hails from DC, but is currently living in LA. She’s most recently known for her short play An Altered State with Double Take Actor’s Collective performed at IAMA Theatre. Ms. Chawla also has many notable list of credits on the DC stage such as her role as Marianna in What It Means To Choke at Keegan Theatre and Fatima in the remount version of The Princess and The Pauper at Imagination Stage. She’s also dabbled in film and can be seen in the South Asian shorts Chol and Satapadi. When she’s not writing or acting, Pooja teaches youth how to improve their reading, writing, and presentation skills via improv and playwriting. Last, but certainly not least, Pooja is excited to join this year’s team of Jurors at the DC South Asian Film Festival.

Zen Dot is an award winning actor, writer, and filmmaker based in NYC. Zen’s films hold women at the center of all stories. She writes comedy and drama and tries to combine both in the same script, because life itself is not just one genre. Her goal is to entertain and delight the audience while keeping emotion at the core of the story.

Hemal Trivedi (India/U.S.) has been editing and directing films for 20 years. Her entire body of work has won one Oscar, three Emmys, one Peabody and seven Emmy nominations, a nomination for MTV Movie Awards, nominations for Independent Spirits Awards and Cinema Eye Award. Netflix, HBO, PBS (Frontline and Independent Lens), YouTube Red, Showtime, BBC, Topic and Channel 4 have broadcasted her work. Her films have been screened in prestigious festivals like Sundance, TIFF, Tribeca, IDFA, CPH-DOX, Telluride, IFFI Goa, Berlin Film Festival. She is a member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy. She was recently selected as a participant in the “Television Academy’s Peer Circle Program”, a small group of 12 Emmy winning filmmakers who meet monthly to grow their skills professionally. She has served as a speaker, mentor, panelist and judge for TEDx, Independent Film Week, the Emmys, Oscars and other prestigious awarding bodies. Recently, she started as Adjunct Professor at Film School of Columbia University, New York.

Shirish Nene, Shirish Néné has served on the jury of the DC South Asian Film Festival every year since 2016, and can regularly be seen at this and other film festivals in the larger metropolitan area. A brief training period with noted Indian dramatist Badal Sircar, started a love for the visual and auditory story telling arts spanning almost forty years, and expanded from the stage to large and small screens. This passion is a family affair today, finding expression in audition workshops with his daughter an LA based actress, and film-making with a son training to be a film director in Virginia. Most recently he and his wife have joined DC Storytellers a dedicated band of moviemakers in the DC metro area.

Mansoor Ahmed, Mansoor Ahmed (Moonie), DCSAFFs Technical Director, retired as the Division Director for Astrophysics at NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center. During the day he studies the stars and in the evening he shoots them. Moonie made his directorial debut in 2013 with the critically acclaimed film, Bhool. His passion for filmmaking can be traced back to his childhood days in Peshawar, Pakistan, where he lived across from the only English language cinema hall in the city – it wasn’t long before he became mesmerized by the world of international cinema.

Vikram Kolluru, Vikram Kolluru works for Thermo Fisher Scientific as an automation systems design engineer by profession. As someone with a great affinity to socialize and deep passion to utilize his creative juices, he has placed himself in community groups linked to theater, cinema and entertainment. Indulging in acting, screenwriting and direction have been his top interests. As team member of DCSAFF Vikram has taken upon multiple hats of media management, organizing volunteers and technical support.