Anwar Jamal

Anwar Jamal, an Indian documentary filmmaker based in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, was born on August 15, 1961. He has won the National Film Award multiple times and has directed critically praised feature, short, and documentary films on various social, political, and cultural subjects. He has served on numerous international film festivals as a jury member, including the National Film Award Jury. Swaraj – The Little Republic (2002) is a feature film about women's empowerment and water politics in rural India that he wrote, produced, and directed. He moved to Delhi to pursue his arts, literature, theatre, and, later, film. While working as a freelance journalist to fund his Master's degree in Hindi literature, he became involved in amateur theatre. At the invitation of its original Chairperson, the late AJ Kidwai, he joined the AJK, Jamia Millia Islamia's Mass Communication Research Centre. He became acquainted with world- renowned documentary director James Beveridge. During his studies, he worked on three films with Anand Patwardhan Anand Patwardhan, a generous, humane documentary f >> Read More... , a well-known documentary filmmaker: In Memory of Friends, In the Name of God, and Father, Son, and Holy War. He directed his first independent documentary film My Name is Sister, about Delhi nurses. His first few short films for Doordarshan were about the Deorala Sati event and the child weddings, which he co-directed with Sehjo Singh. The Call Click to look into! >> Read More... of Bhagirathi was Anwar's first independent documentary. This documentary won the National Film Award for Best Investigative Film in 1992 and was featured in the Indian Panorama.

He also received two more National Awards for co-producing documentaries directed by Sehjo Singh on land rights. For Doordarshan, Anwar directed  Zinda Itihaas, a serial on living cultural legends such as B.C. Sanyal, Zohra Sehgal Zohra Sehgal is a veteran Indian actress and also >> Read More... , and Fida Husain Narsi. He created a short film called "of life and love" for the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva, Switzerland, which is on permanent exhibit. In 2004, he was one of the members of the National Film Awards The National Film Awards gets presented every year >> Read More... Jury.

In December 2004, he served on the International Jury for competition films at the Black Night International Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. Sikandar (2009), a Hindi feature film produced by Big Pictures, featured Anwar as Executive Producer. The movie was shot in Kashmir. On a fellowship from Prasar Bharati and the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, he filmed the independent documentary Anwar – Dream of a Dark Night in 2008. Harvest of Grief, an investigative film on the Holocaust, was released in 2009.