Renuka Jeyapalan is a Toronto-based filmmaker and a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Director’s Lab and WIDC Story & Leadership. Her short film Big Girl premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival where it was awarded the ShortCuts Canada Best Short Film Award. Since then, Big Girl has screened at over thirty-five film festivals around the world—including the Berlin International Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival—and was nominated for a 2007 Genie Award for Best Live-Action Short Film. In 2010, Renuka was awarded the Kodak New Vision Mentorship Award by Women In Film and Television-Toronto and was mentored by director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen). Renuka recently wrote and directed the short film Arranged for TMN, Movie Central, and the Harold Greenberg Fund and is currently developing her first feature film, How to go to a Wedding Alone with Gearshift Films. Renuka has an Honours Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of Toronto.
In 2016, Renuka directed an episode of CBC’s Murdoch Mysteries, and following the CBC Diverse Creators program, her series, Girl in the Boys Room earned a development deal. The series tells of a young woman who stumbles into an assistant job on a Bay Street trading floor.