Lipika Singh Darai

BIOGRAPHIE

Lipika Singh Darai is a director, writer, and editor based in Odisha, India. Trained in sound recording and design at the Film and Television Institute of India, she left the Mumbai film industry around 2013 to focus on making films in her home state, where she belongs to the Ho indigenous community. Despite the limited scope for independent filmmaking in Odisha at that time, Lipika has thrived, earning multiple National Film Awards and international festival recognition. She is known for her film Some Stories Around Witches (2016), produced by PSBT, India, for National Television, which depicts the humanitarian crisis surrounding witch-hunting and has been screened at several social justice film festivals worldwide. Her short fiction film The Waterfall (2017), made for schools across India, focuses on the struggle to protect a dying waterfall and received the National Award for Best Educational Film. Her feature documentary Backstage (2021), which archives the last generation of puppeteers in Odisha, was produced by Films Division, India, and premiered at the 39th Asolo Art Film Festival in Italy, in feature competition. Other than editing for her own films, her credit as an editor also include The Sound Man Mangesh Desai (2017) and National Award winning documentary In the Shadow of Time. Lipika has received four National Film Awards for direction, sound recording, and narration in the non-feature section. Her documentary Night and Fear (2023) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Ammodo Tiger Short competition. She is developing her debut fiction feature, Birdwoman, which has received the Hubert Bals Development Fund 2023. She is one of the ten creative talents recognized in BAFTA Breakthrough India 2023.

FILMOGRAPHIE