Vaishali Sinha

Vaishali Sinha is the director/producer of the feature documentary films Ask the Sexpert (ITVS, Netflix India) and Made in India (PBS). Her films have received multiple awards at film festivals, a Critics Choice Award in India, a Grierson Awards Nomination for Best Entertaining film and a nomination for Ridenhour Prize for Excellence in Truth Telling. Her film Made in India was a case study at Harvard Business School for a class on ethics. Vaishali has been awarded fellowships at Firelight Media Documentary Lab, Flaherty Film Seminar and feminist human rights organization CREA's Sexuality and Gender Rights Institute. She was a Mentor at Video Consortium in 2021 and at Firelight Media DocLab in 2020. Vaishali has a Bachelor's from Mumbai's St. Xavier's College and a film diploma from The New School University, NY. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Film Fatales and Bitchitra Collective: Indian Women in Documentary. Vaishali is from Mumbai and resides in Brooklyn, NY with her music director husband Fred Lassen, and their son Luca.

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ABOUT ASK THE SEXPERT

Ask the Sexpert is a feature-length documentary about Dr. Mahinder Watsa, a highly popular 93-year-old sex advice columnist for a daily newspaper in Mumbai. Despite sex being a taboo topic in India, the column’s brand of non-moralistic advice and humor has emboldened many to write in with their questions. The columnist gains popularity even while a ban on comprehensive sex education in schools is adopted by approximately a third of India’s states.