Anjali Menon

Anjali Menon Biography

Anjali Menon is a National award winning script writer and director of Malayalam. Her debut feature film Manchadi kuru (2012) was premiered at the 2008 International Film Festival of Kerala and won FIPRESCI Award for best Malayalam film and Hassankutty award for best debutant Indian director. Not only that, this talented young artist of Malayalam cinema won National award in the year 2012 for best screenplay. The movie was Ustaad Hotel - the movie that accumulated maximum national awards during 60^th award section. She also won Asianet Film Award and Vanitha Film Award too, for the same movie. In 2012, she won Kerala State Film Award for best screenplay for Manjadikuru. As a film director, her debut venture was Kerala Cafe (2009) where she directed the short segment – Happy journey. She wrote its script as well.

Anjali was born in Kozhikode in 1979. She was grew up in Dubai and studied in Our Own English High School. She took a degree in commerce from Providence Women's College, Kozhikode. She did post-graduation work in communication studies, specializing in TV production, in FTII Pune. Later in 2000, she went to London joined the London Film School where she took direction as her subject. She was awarded overall distinction honors in editing, producing and directing film. In 1997, she started her career by directing documentaries, telefilms and program designing projects for television. In 2006 she started Little Films, a film production company in Mumbai. Manjadikuru happened to be her debut movie under this production company. She had to face a lot of difficulties in completing this movie, particularly because she is one of the rarest female directors of Malayalam.

But the result was shown when she got the FIPRESCI award for the Best Malayalam film at 2008 International Film Festival of Kerala. Not only that, the following year ‘Manchadi kuru’ swept the awards at South Asian International Film Festival at New York, winning five Grand Jury Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematographer & Best Emerging Talent. With the National award winning script of Ustaad hotel, she has emerged as one of the powerful lady celebrities of Malayalam cinema, who works behind the screen.

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Updated: June 03, 2018