Born and raised in North Carolina, Sabina Shamdasani moved to California in 2003 to pursue her passions in filmmaking. While obtaining her MFA at Chapman University, Shamdasani quickly made a name for herself as the recipient of the Hayde Scholarship. She worked closely with mentor and DGA director Carl Franklin on her movie Dada Ji, a family comedy starring Kumar Pallana (The Terminal, The Royal Tenenbaums). Knowing this early on, Bend it Like Beckham producer Deepak Nayar hired her in 2006 as the director of marketing for a new Internet film contest site, Filmaka.com. Shamdasani’s contribution was pivotal to the launch of the company, as she worked actively to promote it at film schools and top festivals such as Sundance and Palm Springs. In 2007, Shamdasani was brought on board as executive producer and host of the Angry Critic’s Corner show on DesiYou.com, a hip South Asian-centric media portal. Nicknamed The Reel Critic, Shamdasani not only wrote and developed the content for the web, but also provided “reel” movie reviews and interviewed some of the hottest personalities in the business, such as Mike Myers, Neil Patrick Harris, John Cho, and Anil Kapoor. In 2010, she directed a video for Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire composer A.R. Rahman’s Indo-Peace concert in Australia, which played live in front of 40,000 fans. She is currently in pre-production to make her feature film directorial debut with the film Bollywood Invasion.