Jury 2026

Aparna Purohit is a creative and business leader with over 25 years of experience across film, television, and media. She is currently CEO of Aamir Khan Productions, where she works closely with Aamir Khan to develop and produce films and documentaries. Previously, as Head of Originals for India & Southeast Asia at Prime Video, Aparna played a pivotal role in building its Indian Originals business, helping shape acclaimed series including The Family Man, Mirzapur, Paatal Lok, Made in Heaven, and Dahaad.

A longtime champion of emerging and diverse voices, she created the Mumbai Mantra | Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and founded Maitri: The Female-First Collective, a community supporting women across the entertainment industry. She is an elected member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and has been recognized by Fortune India, Forbes India, India Today, and Business Today among India’s influential women.

Aranya Sahay, filmmaker and director of Humans in the Loop (2024), a debut film that examines AI, labour, and bias through the story of an Indigenous woman training machine intelligence. Trained at St. Stephen’s College and the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, Aranya’s work blends social realism with scientific and technological inquiry.

Beyond the film itself, he and his team pioneered an impact-driven distribution journey, nearly 100 grassroots screenings across India and the U.S., building momentum that led to executive producer Kiran Rao joining the project and a global Netflix release. A recipient of the prestigious Sloan Distribution Grant, Humans in the Loop was released in the U.S. and came under consideration for the 2026 Academy Awards (Best Original Screenplay), marking a significant moment for Indian independent cinema engaging with technology and society.

Nekisa Cooper is an award-winning producer and executive. She co-designed and led the Tyler Perry Studios Dream Collective program, whose first cohort of directors premiered their films at TIFF. She is President of the Board of Directors of Chicken & Egg Films, which supports women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers around the world.

Over a decade at MasterClass, Nekisa rose from Executive Producer to Head of Content, building a library of more than 175 classes with luminaries including Mira Nair, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Bob Iger, and Indra Nooyi.

Before MasterClass, Nekisa produced Dee Rees's PARIAH, which won awards from Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards, NAACP, and GLAAD, among others, and is honored in the National Film Registry and the Criterion Collection.

Warren Etheredge is a filmmaker, film educator, and film programmer, expert in short-form media, having personally reviewed over 40,000 shorts. He is the Artistic Director & Co-founder of the Walla Walla Movie Crush, lead programmer for the Summer Shorts Film Festival, and shorts programmer for The Seattle Jewish Film Festival. He is the year-round film programmer for the Power House Theatre (in Walla Walla, WA) and the Denizen Theatre (in New Paltz, NY). He has conducted over 4,000 interviews. He directed the short doc, AS YOU WERE, slated to premiere in 2027. He wrote and produced the feature doc, DOWNWIND (d. Mark Shapiro, Douglas Brian Miller), narrated by Martin Sheen which premiered at Slamdance 2023.

Other producer credits include PERSONHOOD (d. Jo Ardinger), FUREVER (d. Amy Finkel), ALL OF THEM (d. Sylvia Sichel), THE PHANTOM 52 (d. Geoff Marslett), LAST REQUESTS (d. Courtenay Johnson), THE LOST MARINER (d. Tess Martin), EVEN THE WALLS (d. Saman Maydani & Sarah Kuck), EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING (d. Sonya Lea) and the webseries, THE ENCHANTED KITCHEN w/Sasha Graham. He teaches screenwriting/filmmaking at the University of Washington and regularly lectures at film schools across the country. He is one of the founding faculty of The Red Badge Project, teaching combat veterans storytelling skills to cope with PTS. He has hosted multiple television series including the Emmy®-nominated The High Bar.

Chaitanya Sareen is a creative and technology veteran with a passion for storytelling. He is an Executive Producer of several works including BAFTA-nominated and Oscar-shortlisted “Yellow,” “Meet the Patels,” and “Alien: American Dream Denied.” He serves as both Jury Director and advisor to Tasveer, the world’s only Oscar-qualifying South Asian film festival.

Chaitanya is also a seasoned product leader with 20 years of technology experience and over 50 patents. Formerly a Senior Director at Microsoft, he and his teams crafted the spatial interfaces and instinctual interactions of mixed reality headsets, the multitasking and productivity innovations of Windows, and information worker breakthroughs in Office. He has founded startups in the fields of distance learning and community recommendations. He is also an angel investor and startup advisor.

Chaitanya is always in search of a good story.