Lara is an Austin-based filmmaker and film fan. During her time working at the Austin Film Society, she worked with festivals such as Indie Meme, Austin Asian American Film Festival, Cine Las Americas, and Austin Polish Film Festival. She has worked with SXSW over the years in several different capacities: as a QC team member, a projectionist, and as a film screener. 

In addition to exhibiting film, she has worked on Austin projects such as NO NO: A DOCKUMENTARY, which premiered at Sundance, ALSO STARRING AUSTIN, which played at Austin Film Festival and Dallas International Film Festival, and most recently Richard Linklater’s APOLLO 10 1/2, which is currently in post-production.

Chithra makes intimate documentaries about identity, human relationships, race, art, and health. A failed attempt to fund a film in India led her to quit a decade-long career as a Physical Therapist and get an MFA in film. Her work is supported by BGDM Sustainability Grant, Jerome Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, NY Council for the Arts, American Institute for Indian Studies, & more, and is pitched at competitive  events like IFP and Sheffield. In the near future, she hopes to direct narrative features & fantastical episodic content. She is an avid runner and has completed 14 marathons. Food is her first love.

Her current documentary project, OUR DAUGHTERS, provides a rare look at adoption through an immigrant lens. When a South Asian woman desperate for motherhood and a white woman seeking a home for her twins cross paths unexpectedly, both take risks and make surprising choices for their daughters.

Bijan Tehrani is president and founder of Cinema Without Borders Foundation and Editor in Chief of Cinema Without Borders & CineEqul, two online publications dedicated to international and social justice cinema. Bijan has been an award-winning writer and film director that has also received multiple awards for his services for promoting international cinema in the US and around the globe.

During the last half of the century Bijan has been a member of numerous international film festivals. He has also organized several film festivals and recently he has been the Director of ELAC International Animation Day Festival, that in April 2021 will hold its 7th edition.  Bijan also founded Bridging The Borders Award fourteen years ago, that has been given to a film that helps to bring people of the world closer together, in eight festivals around the world.