A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Avani Deshpande is an Indian Filmmaker and a Screenwriter who is best known for her work on the Netflix series ‘Trial by Fire’ (2023), ‘Tryst with Destiny’ (2021) on Sony Liv India, and Yash Raj Films’ ‘Hichki’ (2018). She began her film career working as a Script Supervisor and a Second Unit and Assistant Director. She made her Directorial debut with an episode in the limited series ‘Trial by Fire’ (2023) which opened to great reviews and critical acclaim, with Mike McCahill from Variety calling it “Searing.. one of Netflix India’s best yet.” and Shubhra Gupta from Indian Express calling it “Poignant”. It also has a 100% critical and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Born into a family of doctors in Central Indian city of Nagpur, where she completed her schooling. She graduated in English Literature and Psychology at the acclaimed Fergusson College, Pune followed by a Diploma in Journalism from K.C. College, Mumbai. She briefly worked as a Journalist for publications such as The Times of India (Nagpur) and The Indian Express (Pune). In 2010, after having worked as a journalist for a year, she decided to study Film making , particularly in the Documentary format. She went on to pursue an MA in Documentary Film at the prestigious London College of Communication under University of Arts London. Her student documentary ‘The Others’, about the Hijra community in the city of Mumbai, is available on YouTube. She is currently based in India and working on her maiden independent feature.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.