ABOUT

Award-winning Indian writer, photographer and filmmaker Sej Saraiya has spent the last several years documenting Indigenous cultures around the world. She received her MFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California in 2009, and has since traveled to the interiors of Asia on research-oriented photographic journeys that serve as windows into remote cultures and their climate action enriching ways. 

Her short fiction film, THE CURIOUS WOODS (2021), on the beauty and necessity of nature in the life of human beings was screened at film festivals worldwide and won over 25 awards including Best Enivronmental Film, Best Director and Best Viewer Impact. Her short, THE LANGUAGE THEY SPOKE (2019), which appreciates the much needed and forgotten silence in a world full of noise, was also screened in film festivals worldwide and won several awards including Best Experimental Film. She is currently co-directing a documentary FROM HEAD TO HEART on the humble origins of the Art of Living Foundation and the International Association for Human Values, scheduled for release in 2024.

After almost eight years as a cultural-conservation and documentary photographer, her visual storytelling expanded to include film. Her feature documentary, THE DANCE OF FREEDOM (2024), on a tribe of women she had the honor of photographing five years earlier and admires greatly, is currently in post-production.