Teacher in a Box

Tanuj Chopra’s first feature film, Punching at the Sun, about South Asian teenagers coming of age in Elmhurst, Queens, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Other award-winning titles he's directed include Butterfly, Clap Clap, Carbon Dated and the ITVS/Futurestates film PIA, about a runaway, genderbending android. Chopra is currently working on industrial and independent film projects through his production company Chops Films; projects include a $100,000 development grant from Visual Communications and the popular episodic mini-series Nice Girls Crew, starring Sheetal Sheth, Michelle Krusiec, and Lynn Chen. In his downtime, he facilitates New Voices For Youth, a filmmaking program in the South Bay Area dedicated to fostering creativity and civic engagement for at risk teenagers. He holds a BA in Art Semiotics from Brown University and an MFA in film direction from Columbia University, where he was awarded the prestigious Dean’s Fellowship.

Sohini Sengupta is an award-winning creative marketing producer of numerous theatrical advertising campaigns, including 12 Years a Slave, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Black Swan, and Slumdog Millionaire. She is the VP of Interactive Media at Mark Woollen & Associates, the company's digital division, producing content-driven interactive trailers. Sengupta is also a creative producer on short films, including for Film Independent, along with documentaries and music videos, and is part of the production team for the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Sengupta has spoken on various panels including at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival, Promax Mumbai, Promax Singapore, and SXSW. She was recently named one of Glamour Magazine's “35 Under 35” women who run Hollywood.