Radha Bharadwaj was born in India and moved to the United States in her late teens to study film. She is a rarity in Hollywood, being an Asian American female director who creates English language features that are not narrow, ethnic tales but dark tales of suspense and intrigue that are universal in theme and scope.
Her scripts uniformly feature rich, complex and unusual characters—this, coupled with her ability to direct actors to powerful performances, has enabled Bharadwaj to draw major talent to her films.
Bharadwaj's screenwriting and directing feature debut is Closet Land. The critically acclaimed surreal psychological drama has gone on to become a cult classic, with the highest perfect ten-out-of-ten rating of any feature film ever released amongst IMDb (International Movie Database) voters.Closet Land was released by Universal Pictures in 1991, making Radha Bharadwaj the first director of Indian descent to have a film released by a Hollywood major. 
Closet Land stars Alan Rickman (Harry Potter films, Truly, Madly, Deeply, Die Hard) and Madeleine Stowe (The Last of the Mohicans). Director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) produced the feature. Philip Glass (Mishima, The Hours) provided the music score, and Oscar-winner Eiko Ishioka (Dracula, Mishima) designed the film's stark, hallucinatory set and its costumes.The screenplay for Closet Land won the prestigious Nicoll Screenwriting Fellowship sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The script was also chosen to participate in the highly competitive Sundance Screenwriting Laboratory, sponsored by the Sundance Film Institute. Closet Land was released in the United States by Universal Pictures. The film has gone on to achieve the status of a cult classic, and has received the most ten-out-of-ten perfect ratings accorded to any film on the IMDb database. Its unique style has inspired films such as Hostel, V for Vendetta, as well as television shows such as The X-Files and Babylon 5. Closet Land won accolades in major film festivals such as the Toronto International Films Festival, San Sebastian International Film Festival, the Women in Film Festival, Los Angeles; Stockholm International Film Festival, to name a few. Bharadwaj's second feature is the Victorian gothic mystery, Basil. The period thriller, set in the United Kingdom, stars Christian Slater (Heathers, Interview with a Vampire), Sir Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius, Hamlet), Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black) and Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream). The director's cut for Basil was twice selected to be the closing night film for the prestigious Special Presentation series at the Toronto International Film Festival, and chosen for a prime slot at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Bharadwaj's current feature projects in development include the romantic thriller Death by Drowning, the film noir Delilah, the horror-thriller, Phobia, the ensemble action drama, Final Boarding, and the hard-hitting Masa L.A., which takes a politically incorrect look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Acclaimed producer Julio Caro (who was formerly Jennifer Lopez's producing partner) will produce Final Boarding. Death by Drowning, was selected for the exclusive "Signature" series hosted by the prestigious Tribeca Film Institute, the organization that also hosts the Tribeca Film Festival. The "Signature" series is held during the film festival, and introduces a project helmed by an established filmmaker to the film industry. Bharadwaj is currently at work on a new screenplay, which is a gothic horror mystery set in Victorian England. She is also developing a one-hour drama for television. She is also at work on a collection of short stories titled The Rains of Ramghat and Other Stories. The title story in this collection inspired her feature-length Lazarus award-winning script for The Rains of Ramghat. Bharadwaj is an acclaimed award-winning theatre writer-director-actress, with plays and one-woman shows that were staged all over the world to her credit. [Click here to return] [Click here for a copy in Acrobat-PDF Format] |