Leena Pendharkar is an award-winning writer and director. Her most recent work is the television movie, A Date with Deception for Mar Vista/Lifetime, and two episodes of the kids’ show, Hello Jack! for Apple TV Plus. Leena is an alum of the Warner Brothers, CBS, and Sony Diverse Directors programs.

She premiered her sophomore independent film, 20 Weeks, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It was described as an “intimate, compassionate take on abortion” by the Los Angeles Times, and was released theatrically in 10 cities in April of 2018, and on Hulu and a number of other platforms.

Leena has also written/directed several-award winning short films, including Dandekar Makes a Sandwich, which was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of LA. She also wrote and directed the short, Awaken, for which Parminder Nagra won a Best Actress Award at the South African Independent Film Festival and has been distributed on a number of platforms.

Leena is also an Associate Professor at LMU’s School of Film + Television, and has an MFA in Screenwriting from UC-Riverside.