In a small city in northern India, unhappy couples seek solutions to their marriage troubles in the most unlikely of places–the local police station, where a group of hard-working women officers try to institute marital harmony using a combination of carrot and stick.
Shashwati Talukdar – Co-director/Editor – was born and raised in India. MARRIAGE COPS is her second documentary feature. She started her professional life in New York City as an assistant editor for Michael Moore. Subsequently she worked on projects for HBO, BBC, Lifetime, Sundance and Cablevision in New York. Her films have screened worldwide including at the Busan International Film Festival, the Kiasma Museum of Art in Helsinki, and the Whitney Biennial. Her films have been supported by the Asian Cinema Fund in Busan, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Tribeca Foundation, and the India Foundation of the Arts among others. She has received the James Yee Mentorship award from the Center for Asian American Media and the Project Involve Fellowship from IFP (Gotham)/New York. She has an MFA in Film and Video Arts from Temple University, Philadelphia, and an MA in Mass Communications from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She works as a director and editor between Taiwan and India. Cheryl Hess – Co-director/Cinematographer – is an award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer from Philadelphia. Her short documentary SHE GOT BALLS! was a finalist in the If/Then Shorts (Northeast) pitch competition and was recently awarded the Best Director Prize (short) at the Atlanta Docufest. Her work has been supported by the Tribeca Film Institute, The Knight Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and many others. In 2018 Cheryl won the grand prize in the AIA Film Challenge for PAST/PRESENCE: SAVING THE SPRING GARDEN SCHOOL, a short she directed, shot, and edited. In 2022 she was co-DP on Ufuoma Essi’s experimental 16mm documentary IS MY LIVING IN VAIN? which was awarded a Silver Bear at the Chicago International Film Festival. To inspire other women who have very little presence in the online camera space, Cheryl recently started her own YouTube Channel called ANALOG GIRL where she discusses working with motion picture cameras and other related topics.
The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is the oldest, most prestigious film festival screening premieres of feature, documentary and
short films made from, of, and about the Indian subcontinent in the Independent, arthouse, alternate and diaspora genres.
