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Nisha Ganatra
Nisha Ganatra (born June 25th, 1974 in Vancouver British Columbia) is a Canadian actress, film director, film producer and screenwriter. She received a Golden Globe award in 2015 for her work as a director and producer in the television series "Transparent."

She is best known for her films Chutney Popcorn (1999) and Cosmopolitan (2003). Ganatra is known for being a consulting producer on, and directing three episodes of, the first season of the TV series Transparent. Additionally, Ganatra went on to direct episodes of high profile shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Better Things, Mr.Robot, The Last Man on Earth, and Fresh off the Boat. Ganatra graduated from the New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts where she studied with Martin Scorcese and Spike Lee. She is openly lesbian.

Early Life and Education
Growing up in her hometown of Vancouver, Ganatra first explored her interest in film through acting before deciding to then make the switch to pursue film-making. She stated that she wanted to take on being a filmmaker as she wanted to effect cultural change.

Ganatra began her film-making journey by studying at The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Though she wasn't studying film, she explored her interest by sneaking into screenwriting classes which eventually lead her to creating short films.

At age 21, she moved to New York City to pursue a film degree at New York University Film School (NYU). During her time there, she created a short film Junky Punky Girlz (1996) which won NYU's Tisch Fellowship and most outstanding short film from PBS.

Career
After graduating from film school, Ganatra landed a job for MTV's long-running television series The Real World.

At this time, she had also both written and directed a number of independent films including her critically acclaimed movie Chutney Popcorn.

Ganatra is part of a mentorship program with NBC which seeks to provide talented female directors with the same opportunities as their male counterparts. This program selects female directors to be given the opportunity to shadow up to three episodes of an NBC series. The participants will then be able to direct at least one episode of the series in which she has been shadowing.

When Ganatra was on the hunt for a cinematographer, she began to notice that the men's reels were far superior compared to the women's reels. As a female director herself, she was accustomed to being overlooked in the hiring process in favor of men. She realized that the men had better reel's not because they were more talented, but instead, because they had been given bigger budgets, better equipment, larger crews, and elaborate productions. All of these elements allowed the men's work to be far superior, which motivated Ganatra to hire a female cinematographer, and strive to hire female crews.