Rintu Thomas is an Academy Award nominated, Peabody Award winning Indian filmmaker, whose decade-long body of work sits at the intersection of storytelling as both an art and a conversation. Her double Sundance winning, IDA, PGA, Grierson-nominated feature documentary Writing With Fire (2021) was India's first feature documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award. The film screened at over 200 festivals, won 40 awards and described by the Washington Post as "The most inspiring journalism movie - maybe ever."
For her body of work, Rintu is a recipient of India’s National Award, an IDA 'Courage Under Fire Honoree,' IDA Logan Elevate Awardee, Sundance Fellow, Skoll Stories of Change Fellow and South Asia Fellow with the Japan Foundation.
In 2009, Rintu co-founded, along with Academy award-nominated director and cinematographer Sushmit Ghosh, the New Delhi based production company Black Ticket Films. With the company, she has directed and produced over 150 short documentaries that have been exhibited at film festivals globally, included in the curriculum of universities and used as tools for advocacy by diverse communities. From this emotionally resonating and critically acclaimed slate of films, the widely awarded are Dilli (2010) and Timbaktu (2012).
In 2023, she co-founded the Himalayan Story Lab, an incubation space dedicated for Indigenous and Tribal filmmakers from the Indian Himalayan region that has been conceived with the aim to strengthen the next generation of Indigenous director-producers from the North-East region of India. Rintu is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She also serves as a juror and selection committee member for a range of film festivals and fellowships, including the the International Documentary Association Enterprise Grant (US), Points North Fellowship (US), IDFA Academy (The Netherlands), Movies That Matter (The Netherlands), Alternativa Film Project (Kazakhstan Chapter), Festival International du Cinema D'Auteur de Rabat (Morocco).
Rintu holds a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. She lives between Delhi and a quaint mountain-town in North India.
