Bio
In 2023-2025, Waghray was selected to join Milwaukee Film’s Focus Finders cohort, a storytelling accelerator to nurture emerging filmmakers in Milwaukee. In 2022, Waghray received a grant from Milwaukee Film’s Brico Forward Fund and accepted Marquette’s 2022-23 Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship, helping her continue the work on a film about an 83-year-old formerly incarcerated Milwaukee man. From 2020 to 2021, Waghray was a resident artist for ARTservancy, creating films around nature conservation. In 2020, she produced a 2-minute film, Together, Alone, documenting one doctor’s experience during the height of the pandemic for A-Doc.
Also in process is Searching for Sparrows, a feature-length documentary addressing the disappearance of bird habitats caused by rapid urbanization in Hyderabad, India. She pitched this film at the Tribeca Film Festival (2017) and was a DVID fellow at Kartemquin Films (2014).
In 2018, she directed a 75-minute non-linear narrative, On Hands, which calls attention to an essential way of experiencing the world—by using our hands. In 2012, she directed and produced Sleepovers, a coming-of-age film highlighting four suburban Milwaukee girls during three sleepovers over 10 years. Her earlier works include Janet Fitch’s three-part series Guns, Grief, and Grace in America (co-director, 2009) and Ramon Rivera-Moret’s On Calloway Street (co-producer, 2008).
In addition to her film work, she co-founded Didi, which aims to end violence against women, and Bitchitra Collective, which consists of female-identifying filmmakers from the Indian diaspora. She also served on the board of Lynden Sculpture Garden, building programs to bring diverse members to the garden.
