Journalist · Documentary filmmaker
Bylines as Ankita Mukhopadhyay
I'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in California. I have reported from India and the United States, much of it under the byline Ankita Mukhopadhyay. My reporting on Afghan refugees in Delhi became my first film, Far from Home, and I'm now making Divinity 2.0, a feature documentary about young musicians reinventing Carnatic music.
Interview with Grammy-nominated composer Dhruv Goel, recorded at Cinequest in San Jose, about his musical upbringing, Berklee training and score for the French film Her Song.
Image: Ankita M. Kumar
Essay arguing that recent Indian films distort historical facts and that history is increasingly treated as a matter of political interpretation.
Image: Screengrab from movie Ashoka
First-person essay about being assaulted on a San Francisco street after moving to the city, and her experience filing a police complaint.
Image: Ankita M. Kumar
Afghan refugees in Delhi's Bhogal market wait for resettlement that may never come; a reporter's account of making Far from Home.
A thread connects the author's grandmother, born in Bangladesh a century ago, to Samira Faizi of a Delhi refugee colony.
Award: Professional Excellence Award, Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA (2023)
Open Forum piece on the California civil rights agency's lawsuit alleging racial discrimination at Tesla's Fremont plant, based on hundreds of worker complaints dating to 2012.
Image: Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020
Director · Short documentary · 2024
Festival run completed
Samira Faizi fled Kabul for Delhi in 2021. With no refugee law in India and resettlement slow to come, she faces the possibility of being stuck forever.
World premiere at the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival (AmDocs), Palm Springs, March 2024
Supported by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS)
Director and producer · Feature documentary · In production
In production
Two sisters and a rebel set out to modernize Carnatic music, a 1,200-year-old Indian art form. Are they doing too much for too little?
Professional Excellence Award, 2023
Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA (AFPC-USA), for "Seeking Refuge: The Story of Two Women I Know", The Wire
President's Award
Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
Reporting fellowships from National Geographic and the Pulitzer Center
Taught a class on reporting in India at the University of California, Berkeley (2024)
Regional director, Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
