Biography

Anjali Nayar is a Canadian-Indian filmmaker, former climate scientist, and founder of the TIMBY suite of environmental and human rights reporting tools.

Nayar's most recent feature film, Silas, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017 and was acquired by Amazon. The film profiles activists using smartphones to expose land grabbing and corruption in West Africa. Nayar's feature directorial debut, Gun Runners, premiered at Toronto's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2016 and was acquired by Netflix. The film follows two Kenyan warriors who trade in their AK-47s to pursue marathon running. Nayar is also directing Just A Band, a fractionally fictional documentary about an Afro-electric pop group that wants to go to space.Beyond film, Nayar has written and filmed extensively for Nature, Reuters, the CBC News, the BBC, and NPR. Nayar has a Masters in Documentary from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a Masters in Environmental Management from Linacre College, University of Oxford, and a Graduate degree in space science from the International Space University. Nayar founded TIMBY (This Is My Backyard), a suite of digital tools that helps activists report, verify and tell stories safely.