Neelesha Barthel

Neelesha Barthel was born in 1977 in Potsdam-Babelsberg as the daughter of the Indian director student (Chetna Vora) and the German camera student (Lars Barthel). In 1983 she left the GDR with her parents and grew up in West Berlin after stays in India and the USA. Neelesha was drawn behind the camera at an early age and from 1999 she worked on various film projects as a camerawoman, editor and director. Her first cinematic steps culminated in the feature-length documentary “Bling Bling” (2001). After this she made the German TV documentary “Fifty Fifty” (2002). In 2002 Neelesha studied directing at the HFF “Konrad Wolf” Potsdam and concentrated on fictional narration. In 2008 she successfully completed her studies with the TV movie “Zwei zu Dritt”. Parallel to developing the script for her debut film, Neelesha attended a script seminar at the Script Academy. The Kreuzbeg culture-clash comedy “Marry Me!” finally reached the cinemas in 2015. In 2016 Neelesha directed her first TV comedy “A Terrible Rich Couple”. Currently, Neelesha works as a director for TV movies and series and continues to develop her own film projects. Neelesha lives with her family in Berlin.
From 1995 to 2008 Neelesha worked as an actress with her stage name Neelesha BaVora, starring in for example “Samsara” (2001) and “Alltag” (2002).