‏Iram Parveen Bilal‏

Raised in Nigeria and Pakistan, Bilal is a Physics Olympian turned filmmaker. She just lensed her third feature film, based on noted screenplay FORBIDDEN STEPS, a film about a Muslim cop in Chicago this fall. Her previous film, EXTINCTION, is a dystopian future where the #MuslimBan goes extreme. Bilal is developing TV projects set both in the US and in the UK. Her feature project WAKHRI, based on a social media star in Pakistan, just got selected at Locarno's Open Doors Hub financing market. Her past noted feature length works include Josh (Against The Grain), Pakistan's first film to be on Netflix and in the permanent selection at the US Library of Congress and The PhD Movie: Still in Grad School. An avid public speaker and activist, she just wrapped a four year term as co-chair of the Asian American Writer's Committee at the WGA and is an active board member for the Caltech Y, a leading community service organization affiliated with her alma mater, the California Institute of Technology. Bilal initiated the Pakistani Oscar committee and is the founder of Pakistan's first professional screenwriting lab (QALAMBAAZ). She is a Thomas J Watson, Women In Film, Film Independent and CAPE fellow and an active member of the Alliance of Women Directors and Film Fatales, both organizations vested for fair representation of female directors in the entertainment industry. She believes that genuine curiosity is the antidote to fear.