Name: Sanj Krishnan
Graduation Year: 2020
Feature Track or TV Track: Feature Track
Contact Email: sanjkrishnan@g.ucla.edu

Short Bio: Sanj is a screenwriter based in London and Los Angeles. Born and raised in England (with a couple of years spent in India), he found a love of storytelling and filmmaking from a young age. So naturally he went and studied law, graduating with degrees from the London School of Economics and New York University. After working as a human rights and criminal defense barrister, with stints in policy work, he traded his powdered wig for a copy of Fade In Pro. Whilst at UCLA, Sanj received a Pigott/BAFTA Scholarship and a Ron Baham Memorial Fellowship in Comedy.

Short Artist Statement: Sanj's writing blends adventure, fantasy and magical realism with themes of power and oppression, family ties/shackles, and characters whose worldviews are upended by journeys to new worlds.

Logline #1: Coolie Crusade (feature) - A peasant brother and sister from India become indentured laborers in Belize as they search for powerful Maya artifacts that could give them a fair shot at life in the British empire—or the power to overthrow it.

Logline #2: THE HONOURABLE AND CHIVALROUS SIR GREGOR MACGREGOR OF POYAIS (feature) - The real-life story of a glory-hunting Scot who fights in South America's Wars of Independence and declares himself ruler of a fictitious country, defrauding investors and luring migrants to squalor and death in the 19th century equivalent of Fyre Festival.

Logline #3: Far from the Tree (half-hour) - After fleeing his despotic home country of Libertad, snowflake Simón has a good life and exile cred in the safe space of grad school in the USA. Until the State Department forces him to become a double agent and befriend the dictator back home — his father.

Name three movies or TV shows that inspire you: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Princess Mononoke (1997)  ​

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