CONTACT :
Christina Kuo (Creative Artists Agency)
424.288.2000
Niharika Desai is an award winning filmmaker with nearly twenty years of experience in documentary film and television. Last year, she was awarded the prestigious Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary Television. Her most recent film OCTOPUS! is Emmy Award winning and her previous work has earned her multiple Primetime Emmy nominations, a GLAAD nomination, and a Gracie and Imagen award win.
The first decade of her career was spend as a film editor of documentary films and television before eventually producing, showrunning and then directing. Her foundation in editing brings with her a unique approach and perspective to her craft as a director and executive producer.
Her work has been seen on Amazon Prime, NBC Universal/Peacock, Netflix, HBO, CNN, Showtime, MTV, AMC, National Geographic, TLC, WE, Oxygen, VICE & Viceland, and film festivals globally.
As one of the few women of color at the helm of such filmmaking, she is driven to tell stories that others can't, don’t, or won't see. She currently lives between Brooklyn and London and Istanbul and her life at a crossroads of the world impacts her approach to every subject from comedy to drama, documentary to narrative.
She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and shortly after graduating she was chosen as the first South Asian American VJ for MTV in the mid-aughts.