Anjali Nayar

Silas is the story of award-winning activist Silas Siakor and his army of citizen journalists who risk their lives to document corruption and illegalities in both the extractive industries and government of Liberia. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017 and was acquired by Amazon.[3] The film went on to win numerous prizes and nominations, at the Directors' Guild of Canada 2018 Awards, The DC Environmental Film Festival, The African Academy Awards, among others.[11]

The film was supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Just Films, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Sundance Documentary Fund, Sundance Skoll Stories of Change, the IDFA Bertha Fund, the Hot Docs Blue Ice Group Fund, The Alter-Cine Foundation, and the PUMA Catalyst Award. The film was co-directed by Hawa Essuman and co-produced by Steven Markovitz. Executive producers for the project included Edward Zwick, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jenn Davisson, Neil Tabaznik and Robin

During the making of Silas, Nayar worked with Liberian activists to create the TIMBY (This Is My Backyard) reporting tools, now deployed in 21 languages in 40 countries around the world.[12]

Gun Runners is the story of two warriors from Northern Kenya who trade in their AK-47s for running shoes and the dream of marathon running. The film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada and premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto on 2 May 2016 to sold-out crowds.[5] Though many films in the global south focus on social justice issues, Gun Runners moves away from this theme and intimately portrays contemporary Kenya through the eyes of two friends navigating their way through life. The film is an interpretation of the Horatio Alger myth set in Kenya.[13]

Shortly after the film's completion, one of the film's main characters, Robert Matanda and his wife, Stella Ebei, were killed in a car accident when the bus they were travelling in was hit by a truck. Their youngest child, named Anjali, was in the car with them but survived the crash.[14] Nayar and the other filmmakers involved in Gun Runners started a Trust and are taking care of the seven children who Matanda supported. Nayar began a GoFundMe campaign in April 2016. The team raised over $10,000 for the children within the first couple of weeks following the premiere.[13][15]

Gun Runners is currently in its theatrical phase and has screened theatrically in Australia.[16] Gun Runners was screened at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January 2017 and has been profiled by Daily Vice.[17] The film is currently on Netflix.[18][19]

Just A Band (in production) follows the story of four twentysomethings in Nairobi, Kenya, who drop out of university to form an art collective, creating a counter narrative to the lives expected of them. In the film, the four friends form a pact to go to space. Just A Band contains a mishmash of post-modern cultural influences such as the work of Sun Ra, Kung Fu movies, and hip hop. Just A Band paints a truer picture of urban Africa than you can imagine. The film is supported by Sundance, Cinereach, the Ted Rogers Fund, the Hot Docs Blue Ice Group, Worldview, and the PUMA Catalyst Award.[20][21][22][23][24]

Nayar's 's focus in writing for Nature has concerned climate, the environment, and the Global South. Nayar spent a month hiking in Bhutan's mountainous border region with China in 2009 to report on projects Bhutan is undertaking to decrease the dangerous levels of glacial melt in lakes, which have led to deadly outburst floods, known as Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).[40] Nayar won the ICIMOD reporting prize for this work. The same year, Nayar reported on remote forestry projects in Northeastern Madagascar, aimed at curbing carbon emissions for which she won an IUCN-Reuters-COMPlus Global Reporting Prize.[40][46] Nayar's other notable Nature stories include features on hunting for viruses, explosive lakes, and reports on education in the Global South.

Nayar's work for CBC has included long stints of working in multimedia around sporting events, as well as short documentaries for a number of CBC shows and spot news. In the months leading up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Nayar travelled with a soccer ball from Ivory Coast down to South Africa, blogging along the way. She also maintained her coverage (for CBC and Reuters), following the sub-Saharan teams in the competition during the two months of play. Her blog, named Destination South Africa: A ball and a Mosquito Net, was featured heavily in the media.[47] Because CBC no longer has rights to the World Cup, unfortunately the blog is no longer online.

Nayar repeated the concept of the blog, travelling across India in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2011 and for the FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany in 2011 (which again, has been taken down).[48][49] These pieces were similarly heavily featured in the media. Nayar's coverage often used sports as a starting point to talk about everything from nationalism, and politics, to the sexualization of sports. Nayar was a competitive soccer player—training with the Canadian Junior National Team and the Quebec Team, the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds and was named MVP during the Blues match during her year at the University of Oxford. Her step-sister, Rhian Wilkinson, is a member of the Canadian Women's National Soccer Team.

Nayar's other work for CBC included numerous short documentaries on the show Dispatches and news segments both on world affairs and covering her work.[50]

Nayar worked for Reuters TV across Africa between 2007 and 2012. During her time at Reuters, Nayar covered everything from the 2012 World Cup in South Africa to Kenya's election violence, Zanzibar's clove industry, Liberia's logging industry, pharmaceutical trials, as well as carbon trading based on Gabon's forests. Her contributions ranged from short documentaries for Reuters' show Africa Journal to wire news coverage for TV and print.