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.

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.

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.

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.