Biography

Lavanya is a film editor, with a diploma from Film and Television Institute of India. Her diploma film, ‘Monday’ won the National Award in 2018. She has since edited many documentaries, web-series and Independent feature films. 

‘At Home Walking’, a feature length documentary edited by her won the Best Documentary award at IDFSSK, Kerala in 2021. Her web series (as the editor), ‘Love at fifth floor’, is now streaming on Disney Hotstar.  She is currently editing a feature length documentary in Telugu, that was shortlisted as part of the Viewing Room in MIFF 2024. 

She is interested in exploring interfaces between Art, Ecology and community. And, has facilitated film-making workshops in Telangana, Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh, to explore expressions on gender, caste, labour and local livelihoods, among Adivasi and caste-oppressed communities. 

In 2023, she was awarded a visual arts fellowship to develop films with young dalit and muslim women from Telangana. The year-long collaboration led to ‘Kitchen Films’, a series of shorts that speak about the inequality faced by women at home. These were screened at Goethe Zentrum, Hyderabad. 

To listen and assist others as they tell their stories through films, is how she deepens her own practice and learning in Cinema. 

An animal lover, her short film, ‘Nandri and the coconut grove’, was screened at the Seoul Animal film festival, in 2023.  She is currently developing a mixed-media film that combines video, photographs and hand drawn sketches of her musings on the everyday and mundane. 

She believes the ordinary, everyday is cinema’s source of magic. And an editor must learn to observe, listen and wait, before spotting the wonders hidden in plain sight.