Indian American Producer Rajal Pitroda Receives ‘Women at Sundance Adobe Fellowship’
- Presented by the Sundance Institute, it supports women from underrepresented communities doing bold work in film and media.
Producer Rajal Pitroda is the lone Indian American among recipients of the 2021 Women at Sundance Adobe Fellowship, presented by the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit arm of the organization that puts on the annual Sundance Film Festival. The annual program will spotlight eight artists working across disciplines, and was designed to support women doing bold work in film and media. The fellowship prioritizes filmmakers from underrepresented communities and offers a year of mentorship from the Sundance Institute and Adobe executives, as well as workshops, coaching, a $6,250 cash grant and a one-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.
Pitroda, daughter of tech pioneer and politico Sam Pitroda, produces fiction and non-fiction films, tackling issues of race, class and gender beyond the mainstream narrative. She most recently produced “Down a Dark Stairwell,” a feature documentary that premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and was broadcast on Independent Lens. She is an associate producer of the film “The Kindergarten Teacher,” a 2018 Sundance selection; a co-producer of “O.G.,” a 2018 Tribeca Film Festival selection; and an associate producer of “Driveways,” which was selected for the 2019 Berlin Film Festival.
Before producing, Pitroda was the founder/CEO of Cinevention, a media company focused on film marketing and distribution, where she designed and executed distribution strategy for feature films, including “Outsourced,” which was developed into a sitcom at NBC. Before starting her own business, she was a partner at Beyond the Box Productions, creating and running marketing campaigns for independent films.
Pitroda is a 2020-2021 Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow, was a Black Public Media 360 Incubator Fellow, a resident at SFFILM FilmHouse, and an Impact Producer Fellow with Firelight Media. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, A-Doc and the Documentary Producers Alliance. She has a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from London Business School.