Director Story

Aanchal Kapur is a curator and impact facilitator of independent cinema for social impact and active citizenship. In the year 2000, she founded the Kriti Film Club, as a documentary screening initiative of her non-profit organisation -KRITI: a development praxis and communication team. She has been screening and distributing documentary films on a range of social, environment, development and rights issues consistently each month (and sometimes more) for 25 years, in Delhi, Mumbai and parts of India. It also runs an online portal, Doculive that showcases monthly and/ or curated festivals. The audience is diverse, including local communities, non-profits, school and college students, corporates and ‘unconverted’ citizens across intersectional and occupational strata. One of her key roles at these screenings is to facilitate filmmaker-audience conversations, as her mission is to present #thoughtprovokingcinema #cinemaforsocialaction and #socialcitizenship. The Kriti Film Club has remained a non-funded initiative for too long, but survived due to the sheer commitment and support of Aanchal and young student volunteers. Going forward, it needs to be resourced with human and financial resources to sustain and reach more audience groups with many more films that are being made.

Aanchal has conceptualised and organised several issue-based, mini film festivals over the years and these are held around important thematic days through a year. The bigger annual festivals include the Beyond Borders Feminist Film Festival; Eco Reels on Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development and Bacchon ka Bioscope – A Young People’s Film Festival. She has been closely involved (as curator, jury and associate) with the film festivals such as the PSBT Open Frame, IAWRT, Jeevika Film Festival, Dharamshala International Film Festival, Chalti Tasveerein, Vibgyor and the Auroville Film Festival. Aanchal is a member of International Association of Women in Radio & Television (IAWRT) India and the Bitchitra Collective – Indian Women in Documentary

Aanchal Kapur has been working in the social sector as a trainer, documentation and communication specialist on gender, development and CSR focus for over three decades. She has a MSc. in Development Studies (Gender, Social Policy and Planning), from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a Masters in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She graduated from Lady Shriram College for Women with a Bachelors’ in Political Science.

Aanchal works and lives out of Bombay and New Delhi. When not working, she is gardening, dancing and walking under the open sky.