Sharat Raju received an MFA in Directing
at the American Film Institute. AMERICAN MADE, his
thesis film, earned both of the AFI’s top two
honors in directing. The film has screened at numerous
film festivals around the world, winning 17 international
awards. Among the accolades are: Tribeca Film Festival
Student Visionary Award; Angelus Award Grand Prize;
San Diego Film Festival Best Short Film and British
Academy of Film and Television Arts and Sciences (Los
Angeles) Excellence in Short Filmmaking Award.
In September 2004, Sharat appeared in Esquire magazine
as one of 20 young film school graduates to watch.
Prior to graduate school he worked for acclaimed
casting director Mali Finn on feature films including
8 Mile, Matrix Revolutions, and Matrix Reloaded.
Sharat graduated from the University of Michigan
with a degree in English and earned national awards
as a college journalist. He is currently directing
and producing the feature documentary, Divided We
Fall: Americans in the Aftermath, a chronicle of
hate crimes in the United States after Sept. 11,
2001. Sharat has re-teamed with his AMERICAN
MADE crew to bring Divided We Fall to the screen.
