Shalini Kantayya

Set in the near future, A DROP OF LIFE is the story of two women, a village teacher in rural India and an African American corporate executive, whose disparate lives intersect when they are both confronted with lack of access to clean drinking water.[5]

Kantayya's sci-fi film about the world water crisis, A Drop of Life, was broadcast on national television in the U.S. and India.[6] The film was used by the African Water Network as a tool to organize for water rights in 40 villages across Africa.[7]

Kantayya's feature-length documentary, Catching the Sun, premiered at the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival[8][9] and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick.[10] It’s also part of American Film Showcase,[11] and was planned to be shown at U.S. embassies and diplomatic missions abroad. Catching the Sun premiered globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio,[12] and won the Best Feature award at the San Francisco Green Film Festival.

In 2016, Kantayya directed an episode for the National Geographic series: Breakthrough.[13] The series was executive produced by Ron Howard which will air in the spring of 2017 "in 440 million homes in 171 countries and in 45 languages, as well as on the Spanish language network Nat Geo Mundo".[14] The new series documents "scientific explorers from leading universities and institutions and how their cutting-edge innovations and advancements will change our lives in the immediate future and beyond".[15]

Coded Bias is an American documentary film that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.[16] It was directed by Kantayya and follows researchers and advocates, principally MIT computer scientist Joy Buolamwini, as they explore how algorithms encode and propagate bias.[17][18][19][20]