Filmmaking Team
Karla Murthy | DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, EDITOR
Karla is a director and Emmy-nominated producer. She began her career working for the veteran journalist Bill Moyers and has been a producer, shooter and correspondent for several news programs on PBS. Her award-winning work was described in the Columbia Journalism Review as “compelling, informative and compassionate.”
Her directorial debut, the feature documentary The Place That Makes Us won Best of the Festival at Arlington Film Festival, Best Feature at Better Cities Festival and Emerging Documentary Filmmaker at Woods Hole Film Festival, and screened at the United Nations World Cities Day Event. The film had its national broadcast premiere on the WORLD Channel/PBS series America ReFramed. Most recently, she directed and edited the short film Love, Jamie about a transgender artist incarcerated in Texas which premiered at OUTFEST LA and won the Grand Jury Prize for Outstanding Documentary Short and was called “one of the best short documentaries” by Texas Monthly. The film is now streaming on PBS American Masters.
Karla is of Filipino and South Asian descent. She studied classical piano at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in Religion and Computer Science. Her work has been supported by Women Make Movies, the New York State Council of the Arts, Vital Projects Fund, the Firelight Media Residency at Slough Farm on Martha’s Vineyard, and the Yaddo artist residency.
Rajal Pitroda | PRODUCER
Rajal Pitroda is a producer of fiction and non-fiction films that examine issues of race, class and gender beyond the mainstream narrative. She is a Film Independent Documentary Producing Lab Fellow (2024-2025), Women in Film Producing Fellow (2023-2024), Women at Sundance Fellow (2021-2022), Impact Partners Producers Fellow (2021-2022), Sundance Creative Producing Fellow (2020-2021), Black Public Media 360 Incubator Fellow (2021), Firelight Media Impact Producing Fellow (2018-2019) and SFFILM FilmHouse Resident (2018-2019).
Rajal most recently produced “A Shot at History,” a documentary short that premiered at the 2024 Double Exposure Film Festival. Rajal was a consulting producer on “How to Have an American Baby,” and a producer of “Down a Dark Stairwell,” a feature documentary on race and the criminal justice system that premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and was broadcast on Independent Lens. Rajal was the Founder and CEO of Cinevention, a media company focused on marketing and distribution, where she designed and executed distribution strategies for feature films, including “Outsourced,” which was developed into a sitcom at NBC. Prior to starting her own business, Rajal was a partner at Beyond the Box Productions, creating and running marketing campaigns for independent films. She started her career in film working in international marketing for Bollywood movies based in Mumbai. Rajal has a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from London Business School.
Bobak Lotfipour | COMPOSER
Bobak Lotfipour is a second-generation Iranian/Mexican American from Denton, Texas and currently lives and works as a composer and performance artist in Los Angeles, California. In 2016, while still working as a musician playing drums with the band, Dark Rooms, Bobak began his composing career assisting Daniel Hart with The Exorcist TV series leading him to relocate from Denton to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and tv composition. Since then, he has had the opportunity to contribute additional music for a diverse range of productions, including David Lowry directed films A Ghost Story and The Green Knight, Hellraiser, Netflix Original Series The Society, and AMC+ Original Series Interview with the Vampire, before landing his first feature length documentary, King Coal (dir Elaine Sheldon).
Bobak is best known for his handmade, experimental, percussive sounds using both traditional and nontraditional instruments and unconventional objects manipulated with effects. Although typically sought after for his unique percussive sounds, Bobak has been branching out into fuller compositional work, co-writing orchestral pieces for Interview with the Vampire. In addition to his composition work, Bobak continues to create solo work that can be described as ambient, meditative, experimental, electronic, intimate, and haunting. He also regularly performs sound bath meditations in the Los Angeles area.
Ganavya | GUEST VOCALIST
Ganavya Doraiswamy has been called “one of the most compelling vocalists in modern music” by the Wall Street Journal. She is a transdisciplinary scientist, singer, word artist and multi-instrumentalist. Born in New York and raised in Tamil Nadu, she holds degrees from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the University of California in Los Angeles, and the Harvard University, Cambridge. Her recent albums include “Daughter of a Temple” was praised in the New York Times review, “The Singer Whose Work Feels Like a Prayer.”
Geeta Gandbhir | EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Geeta Gandbhir embarked on her career in narrative film under the guidance of Spike Lee and Sam Pollard. As a Director, credits include the series “Born in Synanon” for Paramount, “How We Get Free” for HBO, and “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power,” which was nominated for the 2022 Critics Choice Award, won a 2023 SIMA Award, and is nominated for two 2023 Emmys. She directed and show ran the series “Black and Missing” for HBO which won a 2022 NAACP Award for Best Directing, a 2022 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series, a 2022 ATAS Honors Award, and a Cinema Eye Honors for Best Series. Additional directing credits include a co-director and co-producer role in the “A Conversation on Race” series in collaboration with The New York Times Op-Docs. Most recently, she directed “A Perfect Neighbor” which premiere at Sundance in 2025 and was acquired buy Netflix.
Rekha Malhotra | EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
DJ Rekha (born Rekha Malhotra) is a DJ, producer, curator, and educator. Their dynamic dub and hip-hop informed DJ sets often incorporate South Asian Diasporic dance music with ears to a global sound that resonates with dancefloors across the planet. They have shared the stage with many artists including AR Rahman, Yoko Ono, the Roots, M.I.A and have performed in festivals, clubs, and community spaces worldwide including the inaugural Women’s March, London Mela, 5X Fest, SXSW, Sundance. They founded Basement Bhangra, in 1997, one of NYC’s longest-running club nights. DJ Rekha was NYU's A/P/A Artist-in-Residence for 2006-2007. They have received numerous community awards and in 2009 were inducted into the New York City's Peoples’ Hall of Fame. They have curated music and events for Celebrate Brooklyn, Central Park Summerstage, South Asian Lodge at Sundance, DJ City, and Sona Restaurant. DJ Rekha was a Grand Marshall of the 9th Annual NYC Dance Parade in 2015. They hold a BA in Urban Studies from Queens College and a Master’s of Science in Comparative Media Studies from MIT.