A black and white image of a South Asian woman, wearing long ear-rings, long hair, a black top, and a smile on her face.
Rintu Thomas
Photo courtesy Rintu Thomas
Director & Producer
Website

Rintu Thomas (she/her) is an Academy Award-nominated, Peabody Award-winning Indian filmmaker whose decade-long body of work sits at the intersection of storytelling as both an art and a conversation. Her double Sundance Award-winning and IDA-, PGA-, and Grierson-nominated feature documentary, Writing With Fire (2021), co-directed with Sushmit Ghosh, was India's first feature documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award. The film screened at more than 200 festivals, won 40 awards, and was described by The Washington Post as "the most inspiring journalism movie—maybe ever."

Rintu is a recipient of India’s National Award, an IDA ”Courage Under Fire Honoree,” an IDA Logan Elevate Awardee, a Sundance Fellow, a Skoll Stories of Change Fellow, and a South Asia Fellow with the Japan Foundation. In 2009, Rintu and Sushmit co-founded the New Delhi based production company Black Ticket Films. With the company, she has directed and produced over 150 short documentaries that have been exhibited at film festivals globally, included in the curriculum of universities, and used as tools for advocacy by diverse communities. These include the widely awarded Dilli (2010) and Timbaktu (2012). Rintu is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and lives between Delhi and a mountain-town in the Himalayas. In 2023, Rintu and Sushmit co-founded the Himalayan Story Lab, an incubation lab and fellowship for emerging filmmakers from the Himalayan regions of South Asia.