“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”
︎ Audre Lorde, from The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
sonia desai rayka (she/her)
filmmaker, cultural worker, and writer
Sonia Desai Rayka (she/her) is a documentary filmmaker and cultural worker whose body of work explores political resilience and quiet beauty found in everyday life. She worked as an Associate Producer at Multitude Films on LIFE AFTER (dir. Reid Davenport), and contributed as an archival researcher on DIRTY POP (TIME Studios, 2024) and THE TURNAROUND (Breakwater Studios, 2024), both available to stream on Netflix. She was a documentary and children shorts programmer at the 2024 Nantucket Film Festival, and works with No Evil Eye Cinema as a virtual teaching facilitator. Before working in film, her career experience includes years in childcare support, education, and immigrant rights advocacy. Her documentary short "Ohio is in the Heart" was commissioned by Asian American Documentary Network and played at CAAMFest and New Orleans Film Festival.
Sonia is a 2022 NextDoc Fellow and a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and A-Doc. As a director, her gaze is set firmly on collaborative storytelling that interrogates the embodied consequences of borders and how despite threats to our worlds, joy persists. Based in Brooklyn by way of Ohio, Sonia is the granddaughter of Raghunath and Dhanaben.
Say hello: soniadesairayka@gmail.com
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