Vishnu Vallabhaneni

Born in India and raised in Texas, Vishnu's writing and directing work often regards the repercussions of being a body stuck between ethnic and social identities. While at UT Austin’s production program, Vallabhaneni wrote, directed and edited the short film, Sunshine and Rain. The short screened at New Orleans Film Festival, and Dallas International Film Festival before acquiring distribution online. Sunshine was accepted into a short-to-feature incubator program and is the companion piece to his feature, Chameleon. Vishnu was also the head writer and producer of the NPR podcast, Don't @ Me with Justin Simien, a creative conversation series with guests like Ava DuVernay, Zazie Beetz, Boots Riley, Barry Jenkins and Issa Rae. He has also written copy for and consulted on the marketing of tech and healthcare startups in San Francisco. His most recent short film, 1/30, was shot this summer in New York as a part of the 2019 AT&T Hello Lab with Lena Waithe as his mentor. The film is set on the first day of Ramadan following a Black American man struggling to find his place in his Muslim identity. The short will be released on DirecTV Now, November 2019