Roopa Gogineni is an award-winning director and photographer from West Virginia, based in Nairobi. Over the past seven years her work has focused on historical memory and life amidst conflict across East Africa. She holds a Master of Science in African Studies from the University of Oxford, where she researched the construction of media narratives around Somalia. She directed a Somali reality TV program, an experience chronicled in NPR’s Invisibilia podcast. Her films have examined the narrative of genocide in Rwanda, investigated the origins of Somali piracy, and documented the historic Mau Mau case against the UK government for colonial-era abuses in Kenya. Her most recent short film about a satirical puppet show from Sudan was featured on The New York Times‘ Op-Docs and is now screening at festivals around the world. It earned the Oscar-qualifying Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short, a One World Media Award and is nominated for a Rory Peck Award. Gogineni speaks Telugu, French, and Spanish, and gets by in Swahili and Arabic.
