Career
Dhawan is an Associate Professor and the Area Head of Screenwriting at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She has been commissioned to write for many large companies including Disney, Home Box Office, American Broadcasting Company Family and 20th Century Fox. She has taught at filmmaking labs all over the world.
Dhawan is most well known for Monsoon Wedding, a 2001 film directed by Mira Nair.
And for Cosmopolitan, a 2003 American cross-cultural romance film directed by Nisha Ganatra and broadcast on Public Broadcasting Service. She also wrote the segment "India" (directed by Mira Nair) in 11"09"01 September 11, a series of short films for Canal Plus in 2002. Dhawan"s short film Saanjh - As Night Falls was awarded the Best of the Festival at the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films.
lieutenant also received the Audience Award at Angelus Awards. And was voted "Most Original Film," by New Lincolnshire Cinema at the Polo Ralph Lauren New Works Festival in 2000.
Dhawan has a brief acting cameo in Monsoon Wedding as a wedding guest.
Early Dhawan was born in England and raised in Delhi. Dhawan attended both the Convent of Jesus and Mary as well as Delhi Public School for her elementary education. Dhawan then moved to New York, where she graduated from Columbia University"s Graduate Film Program in 2001 with a Masters of Fine Arts in Film.
Her student short film Saanjh - As Night Falls has been extremely successful since its release in 2000, making it one of the last pieces Dhawan created in her Master of Fine Arts program
Graduating from Columbia in 2001, the same year as the release of Monsoon Wedding, Dhawan"s career was almost immediate. In fact, Dhawan wrote the first draft of the screenplay while she was still in school - it only took her about a week.
The film was premiered in the Marché du Filmsection of the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for various awards, including a Golden Globe. Dhawan is working as a playwright for a broadway adaptation of Monsoon Wedding, originally scheduled to premiere in 2014.
However, the production is still under development and is planned to make its debut sometime in 2017.
