Miriam Chandy Menacherry

Miriam Chandy Menacherry (born 9 March 1975) is an Indian documentary filmmaker based in Mumbai, India. She won the National Film Award for Best Direction non-feature film for From the Shadows.

She founded Filament Pictures in 2005, a production house which creates socially relevant feature-length documentaries. She was one of the 18 filmmakers selected from the Middle East and Asia for the Global Media Makers Fellowship 2019-20 offered by the US State Department and Film Independent. Her documentary, Rat Race (2011) was the winner of the Mipdoc Co-Production Challenge at Cannes (France). Miriam has also won the Asian Television Awards for Best Social Documentary (2007) and the UK Environment Film Fellowship (2008).

Early life and education Menacherry was born in Chennai. She did her schooling at Bangalore. She graduated from Stella Maris College, Chennai with a B.Sc (Honors). She has a post-graduate degree in Film and Television from the A. J. K. Mass Communication Research Centre, New Delhi.

After schooling she was a correspondent for CNBC, India and then moved on to UTV as a director. Filament Pictures was established in 2005 to make meaningful cinema catering to a worldwide audience.

Menacherry directs and produces her films, and occasionally forays into scriptwriting and distribution. Of Malayali lineage, Menacherry is working on the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) and their efforts to bring in change in Malayalam cinema.

The Stuntmen of Bollywood (2005) was produced for the National Geographic Channel. The documentary features the lives and hardships faced by the stunt doubles in Bollywood. It was nominated for 'most innovative’ film at the Asian Television Awards.

A documentary that verges on the border of science fiction, Robot Jockey (2007) explores the juncture in the life of the Bedouin camel racers in Qatar when they had to train their camels to accept metallic riders. On facing international backlash for using child jockeys in camel racing, Qatar decided to silence the criticism by switching to robot jockeys. Robot Jockey won the Asian Television Awards for Best Social Documentary in 2008. Lyari Notes was the opening film at the Artists cinema package at the Kochi Biennale (India), and the Indie Meme International Festival in Austin, Texas (USA). This feature-length documentary film portrays the survivors of child sex trafficking in India. It had its premiere at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. Both From the Shadows and Lyari Notes were funded partly through crowdsourcing.

Filmography 2004 – Back to the Floor for BBC World (Director) 2005 – Stuntmen of Bollywood for National Geographic Channel (Director) 2005 – Mee Koli (Director) 2007 – Robot Jockey for National Geographic Channel (Director/Producer) 2008 – A Light Burns for Discovery Channel and Doordarshan (Director) 2011 – The Rat Race (Director/Producer) 2015 – Lyari Notes (Co-Director/Co-Producer) 2022 – From the Shadows (Director/Producer)