Richa Rudola – 2026 Short Film Script Finalist
Zeenat And The Men Who Give Her Pause
A menopausal woman in a loveless marriage finds a quiet spark with a younger colleague during fleeting elevator rides. As her emotional and sexual buttons are pushed, she must decide how far she is willing to rise.
Richa Rudola is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores identity, consciousness, and other interior worlds. Raised in a science-focused family and trained as a statistician before finding her way to cinema, she often describes her storytelling voice as a collision between intellect and intuition. She loves a story that makes her think and feel.
Her short films Taaza Khoon (Fresh Blood) and The Seal screened at over 45 festivals worldwide and won more than ten awards. Her most recent short, Cow Heavy And Floral, inspired by her own journey into motherhood, has evolved into a national impact campaign through her initiative Meals About Motherhood, fostering honest conversations about parenting, choice, and belonging. Richa’s screenplay about dreams and astrology, One Rose, won the 2020 Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition for Best Hour Pilot.
Zeenat And The Men Who Give Her Pause emerged from a deeply personal reckoning with aging, perimenopause, and the cultural silence surrounding female pleasure. While cinema has long centered the sexual awakening of young women, far fewer stories explore desire in midlife, especially through the lens of a South Asian woman navigating invisibility in both marriage and society. With Zeenat, Richa is drawn to the quiet bravery of late blooming: the radical act of feeling again.
Richa’s filmmaking is rooted in lifelong curiosity and self-examination. She is dedicated to helping people open up to new perspectives, devoted to authenticity, and has it out for bad time management.
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