Mira Nair is an Academy-Award nominated director best known for her visually dense films that pulsate with life. Her debut feature, Salaam Bombay! (1988) won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, followed by the groundbreaking Mississippi Masala, the Golden Globe & Emmy-winning Hysterical Blindness (2001), and the international hit Monsoon Wedding (2001), for which she was the first woman to win Venice Film Festival’s coveted Golden Lion. A fiercely independent filmmaker, she then made Vanity Fair, The Namesake, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Queen of Katwe. An activist by nature, she founded Salaam Balak Trust for street children in 1989, and the Maisha Film Lab in East Africa to train filmmakers on the continent. In 2012, she was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honor.