ig/radhamehta
fb/radhamehta
vimeo/radhamehta
Management:
Nicholas Bogner
Affirmative Entertainment
nb@affirment.com
Radha Mehta (she/her) is a civil engineer-turned-filmmaker whose path to directing has been shaped by navigating worlds others told her she couldn't fully inhabit. Hard-of-hearing since six months old, Radha discovered storytelling through vibrations, her mother's hands guiding hers across tanpura strings and piano keys, and feeling pitch through a visual tuner. Music became her first language of expression, a refuge from isolation that would later inform her approach to visual storytelling.
Before film, Radha spent two decades building her family's civil engineering firm, constructing multimillion dollar highways, bridges, and roads across the United States. She grew the business to a successful sale while wrestling with the weight of inherited expectations and the model minority myth, balancing what her family envisioned for her against her own creative dreams. During this time, she also confronted her cultural community's silence around mental health when someone she loved experienced bipolar disorder, finding herself alone and ill-equipped to help.
These experiences—disability, cultural taboo, family legacy, and the question of what we owe ourselves versus what we owe others—now fuel her filmmaking. As a mother of two, Radha creates films that dismantle the silences she once lived within, exploring motherhood, women's empowerment, mental health, and disability through the lens of the South Asian American experience.
Radha holds an MFA in Film Directing from the American Film Institute and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. She is a WIF 2025 Directing Fellow (e.l.f. Inaugural Makers Grant Winner), CAPE Fellow (Julia S Gouw Grant Winner), Disability Belongs Entertainment Fellow, a STOWE Narrative Lab / Film Fatales Grant Winner, and a voting member of The Recording Academy. Her award-winning films include DOSH (Slamdance Spirit Award; Cannes Lions Young Director Award nominee), SŪNNA (Shine Global Resilience Award Winner, CAPE Julia Gouw Grant Winner); Winds of Silence (UN Women, Geena Davis Institute), Witness (98th Academy Awards Longlist for Best Live Action Short), Standing With Moms (Women’s Voices Now Jury Winner), Evan Ever After (Jury & Audience Award Winner at Florida Film Festival), and Being Gina (STARZ/Lionsgate/WRAP Top 3 finalist).
Radha is currently developing her debut feature, ANITYA (“Impermanence” in Sanskrit), a romance drama inspired by her award-winning short film DOSH. Her feature script was a finalist for the Lynn Shelton ‘Of A Certain Age’ Grant 2026; a Stowe Narrative Lab 2026 Winner of the Film Fatales Scholarship; and was workshopped through the Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab 2026. She is hopeful to shoot her film by Summer of 2027.
Awards & Recognitions
2026 - WINNER, SŪNNA - Shine Global Resilience Award Winner - ReelAbilities Film Festival
2026 - WINNER, SŪNNA - Telly Gold Award
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - George Starks Spirit Award - Slamdance Film Festival #
2025 - WINNER, WITNESS - Telly Silver Award
2024 - WINNER, SŪNNA - CAPE Julia Gouw Grant
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Audience Award - Tasveer Film Festival #
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Jury Award - Bengaluru International Short Film Festival #
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Jury Award - International South Asian Film Festival
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Jury Award - SundarPrize Film Festival
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Jury Award - SignLight International Film Festival
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Jury Award - FilmGood w/ Amazon MGM, Warner Brothers Film Festival
2024 - WINNER, DOSH - Jury Award - New Renaissance Film Festival
2025 - WINNER, STANDING WITH MOMS - Jury Award - Women’s Voices Now Film Festival
2024 - WINNER, WITNESS - InsideOut Film Festival RE:Focus Fund
2024 - WINNER, WITNESS - Islamic Scholarship Fund
2024 - WINNER, WITNESS - Panavision New Filmmaker Grant
2023 - WINNER, WITNESS - Tasveer x Netflix Film Fund #
2023 - TOP 3 FINALIST, BEING GINA - WrapWomen/Variety/STARZ Challenge
2024 - Official Selection, DOSH - AFI Film Festival #
2025 - Official Selection, WITNESS - Raindance Film Festival #
2025 - Official Selection, WITNESS - Slamdance Film Festival #
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Cleveland International Film Festival #
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Florida Film Festival #
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Out on Film Film Festival #
2024 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Tasveer Film Festival #
2024 - Official Competition, DOSH - BronzeLenz Film Festival #
2024 - Official Competition, DOSH - Cannes Lions Young Director Award
2024 - Official Nomination, DOSH - American Society of Cinematographers Student Heritage Award
2025 - Official Selection, WINDS OF SILENCE - Voices With Impact Film Festival w/ VIFF
2025 - Official Selection, WINDS OF SILENCE - 16Days16Films Film Festival w/ UNWomen, BFI
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - InsideOut Film Festival
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Bentonville Film Festival
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - New Filmmaker Los Angeles Film Festival
2025 - Official Competition, WITNESS - Out South Film Festival
2025 - Official Selection, DOSH - Chicago South Asian Film Festival
2025 - Official Selection, DOSH - Vancouver Asian Film Festival
2024 - Official Competition, DOSH - World Cultural Film Festival
2024 - Official Selection, DOSH - South Asian Film Festival Orlando
2024 - Official Competition, DOSH - New Filmmaker Los Angeles Film Festival
2024 - Official Competition, DOSH - New York Indian Film Festival
2024 - Official Competition, DOSH - ReelAbilities Film Festival
2024 - Official Selection, DOSH - NorthEast International Film Festival
2024 - Official Selection, DOSH - Not Your Daddy Film Festival
#Oscar Qualifier