SWETHA REGUNATHAN is an award-winning writer and director based between DC and NYC. She grew up around the fallow strip malls of central New Jersey and will never be able to write her way out of it. She has an MFA from the Graduate Film program at NYU and a PhD in English Literature from Brown. Her work explores nostalgia, disappointment, South Asian-American identity, and ecological sickness.

Swetha's short films include Before It Breaks (True/False Film Fest '23; NOWNESS ASIA) Forever Tonight (Short of the Week '22; South Asian Film Festival of America '22 - Jury Prize; Maryland Film Festival '21; HollyShorts '21; Indian Film Festival of LA '21) and Hasim October (NoBudge '19, Chicago South Asian FF '18). She has received awards from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, South Asian Film Festival of America, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and the BlueCat Screenplay Competition and was a finalist for the SHOWTIME® Tony Cox Screenplay Contest (2019) and on the shortlist for a Lexus Short Films award (2017). Her feature-length film, Burnout (in dev) was selected for the 2023 NYU Purple List and the 2023 NYU Production Lab Development Studio. Another feature, Sundarbans (in dev) was selected for the 2020 Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab and the inaugural 1497 South Asian Writers Lab. She was also 2020-21 Gotham (IFP) Marcie Bloom Fellow.

Swetha produced Between Earth & Sky (Big Sky Film Festival '23; Hot Docs '23) and If There Is Light (Tribeca Film Festival '19; Le Cinema Club '19; Hulu) and also directed music videos for artist Sunny Jain, which premiered on Brooklyn Vegan and Rolling Stone India. She's also directed and produced branded video for clients like Vox, WaPo, Delta x NBC, OpenTable and NPR. Her writing has appeared in Huffington Post, n+1, Guernica, and other publications. In 2009 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Best American Essay.