Ekta Saran

Ekta Saran is a Commercials Director and Filmmaker based in Dubai UAE. With a decade as a writer in the advertising field, she switched careers to behind the camera and slowly garnered recognition for her talent to capture and express compelling human narratives.

A theme she has always gone back to in her personal work is identity. As a result of never calling one place a home, she’s always wondered about the idea of belonging somewhere. The result has been 2016’s ‘Chasing Bur Dubai’, 2020’s co-directed endeavour ‘Karama 267’; both projects aimed to shine light upon the residents of Old Dubai that have called it home for decades, far removed from the shiny slick image of the city that’s usually presented to the world. Most recently, she wrote and directed The Laundromat, a short which won Best Microfilm at the 2024 Top Shorts Film Festival capturing a moment in a day of a man who works at a laundromat in Dubai.