Shyam Benegal, Film director & screenwriter with 41 films and multiple awards to his credit. Shyam Benegal was awarded the “Padma Shri in 1976” and “Padma Bhushan in 1991”. Born in 1934 in Andhra Pradesh, Benegal originated what has come to be called "middle cinema". He was initially involved in the advertising industry and produced over 900 advertisements before his interest turned to films. For many years, Shyam Benegal's films were associated with grim representations of Indian realities, and the same set of characters appeared in many of his films and those associated with the New Indian Cinema. But Benegal has always had wider interests and the films of recent years show his lively engagement with questions of narrativity. He is also a respected documentary film-maker, and his most recent endeavor in this direction is a cinematic study of the early years of “Gandhi in South Africa: thus the Making of the Mahatma”. He has also taught at the Film and Television Institute in Pune and continues to be an influential presence in Indian film circles.

Anjum Rajabali’s first film was Drohkaal in 1992 – written in collaboration with director Govind Nihalani. Subsequently, eight more films written by him have been released, including Ghulam, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, and Raajneeti. He has been the Commissioning Editor of a TV channel, a script doctor and consultant to several films, is a member of the Executive Committee of the Film Writers Association and on the Central Board of Film Certification. In 2004, he designed and set up India’s first full-fledged screenwriting department of which he is now the honorary head, at the Film and Television Institute of India Pune (FTII). Since 2006, he also heads the screenwriting department at Whistling Woods International Mumbai.

Sidharth Bhatia, author of “Cinema Modern The Navketan Story”, has been a journalist for over 35 years, working both in India and abroad. He is a regular commentator in newspapers and on television on current affairs, society and culture. Till December 2009 he was on the editorial board that launched DNA and ran the editorial page of the paper. He was awarded the press fellowship to Wolfson College, Cambridge and made an associate fellow of the college in 2001. He was a foreign correspondent in South Africa during the transition to democracy in 1993.

Nasreen Munni Kabir, an India-born television producer based in UK, is a renowned documentary filmmaker & author. Her work includes the 46-part series Movie Mahal, In Search of Guru Dutt, Follow that Star (a profile of Amitabh Bachchan) and Channel 4 series such as How To Make It Big In Bollywood. She won the 1999 Women of Achievement Award in Arts & Culture and became a governor of the British Film Institute in 2000. Nasreen also produced a documentary on Shahrukh Khan "The Inner and Outer World of ShahRukh Khan". She has also published a coffee table book called “In Search of Lata Mangeshkar” and a book titled "A. R. Rahman: The Spirit of Music" which was written based on her conversations with the two legends.