Nisha Ganatra

Nisha Ganatra is a British-Canadian lesbian filmmaker, trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts under Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee, known for Chutney Popcorn (1999), which she wrote, directed, and starred in -- a comedy about a lesbian Indian-American woman who agrees to be a surrogate for her sister -- and for Late Night (2019), starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, which premiered at Sundance before Amazon Studios acquired it for a festival-record $13 million. A Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee for directing and producing the first season of Transparent (2014), she has also directed episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Better Things, Girls, Shameless, and Mr. Robot, among many others. Ganatra has been openly lesbian throughout her career and has spoken about the compound challenge of being a South Asian lesbian filmmaker in an industry that has been slow to value either identity.