ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Often left home alone by busy parents working to keep a roof over our heads, Ariya found companionship in movies. Soon after, he began telling stories any way I could— drawing comics, writing, until he stumbled upon cinema. Finally, creating films became his primary method of storytelling. It was since then that he decided to pursue filmmaking as a career.
Ariya received an MA in Dramatic Arts on a scholarship from the world-renowned Central Saint Martins. There, he polished his craft while studying the discipline of communicating with actors. Upon graduating, he was pulled into the world of photography. As a photographer, he perfected his understanding of art direction, storytelling within a frame, and painting with light, ultimately strengthening who he is as a director. His work featuring actors such as Brenda Song, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Avan Jogia has made the covers of magazines like Vulkan, Bello, and QP. Meanwhile, he directed multiple music videos and worked as the creative director of Anona before returning to narrative film, one of which starred Never Have I Ever’s Lee Rodriguez. In 2023, his narrative short ‘Echoes of Silence’ received an honorable mention from AGBO’s ‘No Sleep ‘Til Film Fest’ Competition. Still, throughout all of this, there was a part of him searching for a way to use his art to speak on the world he left behind. This is how ‘The Scream of the Butterfly’ came to be.
PRODUCER & SCREENWRITER
Anjini Taneja Azhar is a director and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. She fell down the world of cinema like Alice did the rabbit hole. Aimlessly searching for a passion as a child, she often found herself coming up short. All she knew was that spending hours in front of her parents' clunky dinosaur of a desktop computer with MS Word 2007 open, typing up stories and creating characters, felt like a warm blanket around her shoulders. On whim, she began acting in 2011 after a talent agent in Los Angeles scouted her. From there she booked principal and lead roles in features such as JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as TV such as Ryan Murphy's The New Normal and HBO's The Brink. Surrounded by visionary directing, bustling writers, and a labyrinth of light, Anjini immediately realized her hideaway in front of a blank page back home had a greater purpose in her life through cinema. She dove into her newfound love quickly, workshopping her craft as a director and screenwriter. Since 2015, she has been writing, directing, and producing. She's written and directed multiple award-winning shorts, co-produced for Fortune 500 companies, and even co-written a feature. Anjini has been featured for her work in Forbes, Women Cinemakers Biennale Edition, and Ladygunn Magazine.
Anjini's 2023 narrative short, 'EVERYWHERE YOU GO,' received its world premiere in-competition at the Oscar-qualifying LA Short's Int'l Festival and screened at Newport Beach Film Festival. Anjini’s most recent narrative short script ‘Who Are You, Nanu?’ in partnernship with British Airways and Trifilm Productions won the Grand Jury Prize for the Shore Scripts Fall Film Fund, and was shot on 35mm film on the Ganges River, India in April of 2024. Anjini is a WritersxWriters Finalist, Hollyshorts Screenplay Competition 2nd Place Winner, Golden Script Finalist and PAGE Awards Semifinalist.