Sheena Sumaria is a British-Gujarati documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Guerrera Films. With a background in Economics and Development Studies from Cambridge and SOAS, she transitioned from international development to filmmaking, driven by her passion for social justice. Her projects include “Still Standing,” capturing life in Medellin’s slums; “Chile Building Dreams,” about the Chilean student uprising; and “Even the Crows: A Divided Gujarat”, her debut feature co-directed with her sister Sonum, which examines the 2002 Gujarat pogrom.

Her latest feature The Fisherman and the Banker chronicles a decade-long struggle of a fishing community in Gujarat against the World Bank Group. The film has been screened at various festivals and cinemas in the UK.

Sonum is an award-winning filmmaker, who has been making documentaries with marginalised communities for the past thirteen years. She read Spanish and Russian at Cambridge University, and studied at the Cuban film school, EICTV, going on to complete an MA in Cinematography at MetFilm School in London. Her work includes ‘In the Shadows of Moscow’, a film exploring xenophobia in the Russian capital, ‘Goppi, The Cuban Indian’, a short about identity and belonging in Havana.

Sonum has a deep interest in nomadic and indigenous communities and her latest feature Under The Open Sky follows one of the last remaining nomadic camel-herding families in Western India as they face an existential dilemma: to continue their traditional way of life or to adapt to a rapidly modernising world.