UWCSEA Alumni directing and producing Hollywood films Giri Sripathy ’06 Producer. Daniel Grove ’03 Director

Hollywood producers and directors

Giritharan Sripathy ’06, Producer

After graduating from UWCSEA in 2006, Giri completed his Singapore National Service commitment before entering New York University’s (NYU) Tisch School of Arts in 2009, taking minors in business and politics and focusing mainly on the pursuit of his dream of acting. There, Giri found success in several performances, and forged many lasting relationships that would pivot his career when he moved to Los Angeles after graduating in 2013.

During the production of a pilot television program in which he was not only a supporting actor but also served as an executive producer, he found that he had a talent for producing films. From there, he began his own production company Ball and Chain Productions. He first produced The Good Neighbor, starring James Caan (The Godfather, Misery), which had its world premier at the South by Southwest Film festival in 2015 and was subsequently released theatrically in the US later in the year, and has gone on to produce Permission starring Rebecca Hall (Vicky, Christina Barcelona, The Town) and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and The Beast), and Tilt starring Joseph Cross (Lincoln, Milk), both of which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and are slated for release in early 2018. He recently wrapped his latest project, JT Leroy, starring Kristen Stewart (Twilight, Cafe Society), Laura Dern (Big Little Lies, Jurassic Park), Diane Kruger (Troy, Inglourious Basterds, In the Fade) and Jim Sturgess (Across The Universe, Cloud Atlas). We were delighted to welcome Giri back to UWCSEA in 2017 to speak to a Grade 11 IB Film class as part of our alumni mentor programme.

Daniel Grove ’03, Director

Daniel says he has always been a theatre kid, participating in Art, Music and Drama at UWCSEA. “My first real cameo was singing the Ken part to I’m a Barbie Girl in a UWCSEA production of The Bridge to Terabitha.” He did not choose to study performing arts at Sydney University, instead reading Philosophy and Media, but his interest remained and eventually led him to LA and to film directing. He quips, “Directing felt like a good way to combine my otherwise useless skills!” In July 2017, Daniel released his feature directorial debut, The Persian Connection in US theatres. He made the film in Los Angeles because “The film was very much inspired by the geo-politics of LA. I was influenced by the great neo-noirs like Taxi Driver and Chinatown and I wanted to make an LA noir influenced also by my own experience of LA.” Daniel has recently moved to Berlin after more than eight years in LA, to work in the German TV industry. He says, “Germany has an incredibly rich culture and a society willing to learn from the past and there’s an opportunity for American trained foreign voices like myself to have a say, particularly in these daunting times.”