Aruna Raje

Aruna Raje was born in the year 1946 at the city of Pune, India. By profession, she is an Indian film editor and director popular for her works related to feminism and issues related to women in Indian Hindi Cinema (Bollywood). She used to be a tomboy and was fond of reading Shakespeare at the age of 13. She got married to actor/director Vivek Desai. The couple had two kids, a son and a daughter, but after sometime, the daughter died and the couple could not handle and resolve the differences and soon got divorced but professionally kept on working together.

Initially, Aruna planned enter the field of medicine and to do so, she even enrolled herself in a Medical College named Grant Medical College situated in Pune, India to study M.B.B.S. But her real passion was for something else and hence she soon quit her college and joined FTII (Film And Television Institute of India). In the year 1969, she passed out from FTII with a gold medal. She was the first ever trained women technician in the film industry.

When she decided to join the Bollywood film industry, quitting medicine, her parents were against her and never gave her the approval to do so. During the start of her career in Bollywood, that is around late 1970’s and early 1980’s she used to work with Vikas Desai Bio coming soon... >> Read More... , and the duo was popularly named as Aruna-Vikas team. The duo co-edited the hit films like Masoom and Giddh and after this, as a team both of them co-directed the films like “Gehrayee”, “Shaque” and “ Sitam Sitam is a Hum TV drama that premiered on May 17, >> Read More... ”. When Raje and her husband parted their ways, she started making and directing feminist movies independently which struck the audiences very hard. She has also tried making many documentaries which won national awards, the best ones based on differently abled children “The New Paradigm” and on the life of classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai Mallika Sarabhai is an activist, Indian classical >> Read More... . She has also written script for the movies like “Red Alert: The War Within (2009)”, Tum-A Dangerous Obsession (2004), “Rihaee (1988)”, “Situm (1982)”, “Behind The Glass Wall (2015)”, “A New Paradigm” etc.

She always believes in working with the elements of realism and authenticity and tries to indulge the same in her movies. Being the first professionally trained woman technician in the industry, she had to work 10 times harder to prove herself, her capabilities and talents in this male-dominated profession but she proved herself very well and established a benchmark for others.