Leena Manimekalai is a leading Tamil poet and a multiple award winning filmmaker. Her voice is distinct, as she is a 'genre no bar' artist. Her strong repertoire of films with an impressive exhibition record covering over 100 International Film Festivals includes the acclaimed Maadathy-an unfairy tale (Feature Fiction), Sengadal-the Dead sea (Cinema Verite), White Van Stores (Feature Documentary), Is it too much to ask (Mockumentary), Goddesses (Short Documentary) and My Mirror is the Door (Cine Poem). She is an interventionist and her forte is participatory filmmaking. Her tryst with censorship, both constitutional and extra constitutional, as a brown queer female body, as a poet and as a politically unapologetic filmmaker is in itself a meta narrative in her journey as an Artist. She was recently chosen as a BAFTA India Breakthrough Talent (2022-23), named Artist in Residence by the University Toronto (2023), profiled as one of the twenty artists who inspire change globally by PEN America (2023) and nominated as a Fellow for Center for Ethics and Writing, Bard College, NY (2023-24). She has a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Film from York University and is currently teaching Undergraduate students at the Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto, Mississauga.