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Logline

The 12 best Indian ballers from around the world join forces to compete for $1 million dollars to show the world Indians can hoop on ESPN’s international stage.

Synopsis

Hoop Like This: The India Rising Story is about showing the world that brown people have a place in sports.This is a story of the incredible, yet unseen athleticism within India and its diaspora of 30M+ people. A story that can inspire. A story that reminds us to dream big. Hoop Like This: The India Rising Story follows this historic team as they pave the way for the next generation of brown athletes.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Shubhangi Shekhar – Director/Producer/Executive Producer
Shubhangi Shekhar is a multi-hyphenate creator with development, digital production, directing, writing, marketing, and journalism experience from award-winning and critically acclaimed global media companies such as A24, Verizon Media, Roy Kapur Films, Condé Nast Entertainment, and Patreon.

She was also part of the inaugural class of The Salon Mentorship Program for up-and-coming South Asian talent in the directing track, under the mentorship of TV director Anu Valia. She received the Pano microgrant as a producer, and the Brown Girl Magazine x The Cosmos Care Fund microgrant as a writer and director for her projects in 2022. She was a WIF Creative Documentary Producing Fellow from 2023-2024, and recently completed the Netflix DART (Documentary Archival Researcher Training) program.

Along with producing, directing, and developing a handful of independent projects, she also supports and mentors up-and-coming South Asian writers as one of the writer’s room leads with the Rickshaw Film Foundation. And when no one’s watching, she expresses herself through her poetry. Her artistic voice is fundamentally rooted in the cross-section between Western and South Asian cinema, and she aims to tell unique stories that gauge mass audiences across language, cultural, and gender barriers.

Gautam Kapur – Lead Talent/Executive Producer
Gautam Kapur spent the past 6 years working at the National Basketball Association (NBA) in New York. He has spent most of his life overseas, growing up in India, Australia, Singapore, and the USA. Gautam’s life’s mission is to elevate the profile of brown athletes around the world, which led to him launching Brown Ballers while pursuing his MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

At the NBA, he was the portfolio manager for NBA Launchpad, the league’s first-ever sports tech incubator, identifying next-gen solutions that advanced the game. His passion for international athlete development led him to work on the NBA India Academy and the Basketball Africa League, creating new pathways for elite talent outside of traditional powerhouses.

Recognizing the lack of representation for South Asian athletes in mainstream sports, he founded India Rising, a first-of-its-kind All-Star basketball team uniting the world’s best players to compete on a global stage. But for Gautam, this work was never just about the sport. It’s about rewriting the narrative for 25% of the world’s population. Through live competitions, athlete management, and cultural storytelling, Brown Ballers proves that South Asian talent can also exist at the highest levels of sports and entertainment.

Akhil Hegde – Executive Producer
Akhil Hegde is the founder & CEO of HRTGE, a global media company dedicated to supporting South Asian artists & creatives across all art forms. He was formerly at UTA for 6 years where he worked as a music & film crossover agent. Throughout his time, he spearheaded the agency’s practice of representing South Asian artists, including Zayn, Nav, Savan Kotecha, Indo Warehouse, Rajiv Menon & more. In addition, he booked multiple global artist tours, packaged and sold film projects, and managed the agencies relationship with the subcontinent and its global diaspora. Akhil’s central and ongoing mission is to enrich the world with South Asian culture and platform its vast global creative community.

BFD Productions – Executive Producers
BFD Productions, founded by Executive Producers Roxy Hunt and Tony Castle, is an award-winning film and television production company based in Brooklyn, New York. Wife and husband team, Roxy Hunt and Tony Castle, focus on telling human stories on the fringes and bringing them to the forefront of entertainment.

Notably, they have produced documentary television series’ for HBO Max, Discovery+, CNN, Marvel, CBS, Showtime, as well content for Vox, Fast Company, The Guardian, The Women’s March, Emily’s List, Everytown For Gun Safety, and Planned Parenthood. For more than a decade, the BFD team has brought together a diverse collective of creatives devoted to the future of how stories are told and consumed.

Roxy Hunt and Tony Castle also founded The Lower East Side Film Festival (LESFF) alongside filmmakers Damon Cardasis and Shannon Walker in 2011 to showcase independent filmmakers in Manhattan’s vibrant Lower East Side. In 2022 they launched ‘The Stay Indie Project’ – a development and fellowship program, as a part of LESFF and BFD Productions’ dual mission to seek out emerging voices in film and support their work.

Kunal Patel – Producer
Kunal Patel is an entertainment attorney and co-founder of award winning multimedia production company Mild Mannered & Timid (MMT). Previously at Maxim, Universal Music Group and Vice Media, he has also released 7 albums, been featured on multiple bollywood soundtracks, video games, and performed at the IIFA awards. His work has been featured on NBC, All Def Digital, VIBE Magazine and more. He has lent his legal experience to shows like F*ck That’s Delicious, the Oscar Award winning film Coda, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant.

Kunal’s experience puts him in a unique position to understand the artist’s motivations while also having knowledge of the business that can influence an artist throughout not only their career, but their life.

Neeraj Jain – Cinematographer
Neeraj Jain is an Indian American cinematographer and producer based out of Los Angeles and New York. He has shot projects in both the United States and India. During his time at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, he earned the Faculty Commendation in Cinematography. He has also been mentored by cinematographers such as Rodrigo Prieto A.S.C., Tom Houghton A.S.C., and Ben Kutchins.

His first feature film The Sound of The Wind (2020) released with many critics praising the cinematography of the film. Most recently, he shot the second season of Zoya Akhtar’s Made in Heaven (2022) for Amazon Prime.

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Contact

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