Elroy Pinto

Elroy Pinto is a filmmaker, writer, researcher, and curator who works in documentary, fiction, and experimental film. His work transforms performative, musical, and visual lineages derived from pre-colonial South Asian art forms into contemporary adaptations. Born in India and based in Toronto, his work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at Chatterjee and Lal (India), Oaxaca X (Mexico), SiGns film festival (India), Mediterranean Film Festival of Cannes (France), South Asian Film Festival of Montreal (Canada), Indian Documentary Film Festival Bhubaneswar (India) and the Independent Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (India). He has trained under the new-wave filmmaker Kumar Shahani (d.2024) and Hindustani Sangeet vocalist Neela Bhagwat (d.2026).

His writing on film has appeared in the Mumbai University Philosophy Journal, Doctoral Horizons (UNATC Press), and a forthcoming book chapter on the epic structure of Fareeda Mehta’s Kali Salwaar in Urban Imaginaries (Rupkatha Books). His writing on culture has appeared in Public Parking (Canada) and Maidaanam (USA). He curated films at Nirmik, Mumbai’s only Dalit Ambedkarite artist-led cultural center located between two of the largest slums.

In 2025, Elroy was awarded a Professional Development Flaherty Fellowship (USA). His latest film is a documentary-fiction film funded by the India Foundation for the Arts, that adapts the 19th-century ballad “Governor and Koli” to explore indigeneity through personal family archives, community folk songs, and fictionalised inter-generational conversations. Elroy holds a Master's in Global Cinemas from SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom).