Bhavna Talwar Biography

Bhavna Talwar is an Indian journalist turned film director. Her debut film, Dharm (2007), won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration at the 2007 National Film Awards. She then worked on Happy which was released in September 2010.

Career

She started her career as a journalist at Asian Age, covering film, theatre, fashion, and later worked for over eight years as an assistant director with an Ad film company . She was nominated as agency producer for the "The Rain - Reebok" commercial at the Cannes Ad Fest.

Her first film Dharm (2007), starring Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak, premiered as the closing film at the World Cinema Section at the Cannes Film Festival 2007.

She created a controversy by claiming that her film Dharm (2007) should have been selected as India's official Foreign Language Film submission for the 80th Academy Awards, but was rejected in favor of Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007) because of the personal connections of the latter film's director and producer.

She filed a complaint in the Bombay High Court in which she accused the Indian selection committee of bias, but later dropped it because the Foreign Language Film submission deadline had already passed.