Ankita Mukhopadhyay Kumar is an award-winning Indian journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the US. Ankita’s directorial debut, Far from Home, was selected to over eight film festivals, including the Academy award-qualifying Tasveer Film Festival and the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival. Far from Home, which is the story of Afghan refugees in India, was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS). The film was a finalist for NHK’s prestigious Japan Prize and runner up in the Best Short Documentary category at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival (CSAFF). It’s the first documentary on Afghan refugees in India.

As a journalist, Ankita is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Professional Excellence award from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States (AFPC-USA) and the Presidents Award from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). She has worked at POLITICO and was responsible for launching their new mobile app, worked as a field journalist for Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster and covered the automotive sector as a business journalist for The Economist Group.

In 2024, Ankita taught a class on reporting in India at the University of California, Berkeley. Ankita has received reporting fellowships from National Geographic and the Pulitzer Center and her articles have been published in India and globally. Ankita is currently a regional director at SPJ, the world’s oldest journalism organization. Ankita has previously worked at Deutsche Welle (DW) and The Economist Group in India.

Ankita has a Masters degree in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and she also holds a Masters degree in History and International Relations from the London School of Economics. Her Masters dissertation at the LSE received the highest grade – distinction. She holds a Bachelors degree with high distinction from Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR) and received LSR’s NK Mehta award for her immense contribution to the college. She has worked for prestigious journalism organizations such as Deutsche Welle (DW) and The Economist Group. Ankita is now fully immersed in the world of cinema, working as a cinematographer and director on film sets in LA while setting her eyes on securing funding for her feature documentary project, Divinity 2.0. In her free time, she enjoys brushing up her skills in Hindustani classical singing, opera singing, musical theatre and tabla.