Rita Rani Ahuja was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, grew up on the East Coast, then Bangalore, India and finally Los Angeles. She graduated with a B.A. from UCLA in the World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department with a concentration in Ethnographic Film. As an actress, Rita has voiced the character “Alexandrite” on The Cartoon Network’s animated show Steven Universe. Other work includes the indie comedy The Way We Weren’t starring Fiona Gubelmann and Ben Lawson, Speechless on ABC and Sleeper Cell for Showtime amongst others. Rita won the Images Award at the Filmi Film Festival in Toronto, Canada for her performance in the indie feature, Trade Offs. 

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Rita received her MFA in Screenwriting from the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA. Her first feature, MumBai Company was an Honorable Mention in UCLA’s Professional Program Screenwriting Competition in 2012. It was also selected for the Indo-German Screenwriting Lab in Berlin. Rita has been a finalist for the Mumbai Mantra/Sundance Institute Screenwriting Lab twice. She has also been an Alfred P. Sloan Finalist twice. Rita was the recipient of The Stephen N. Gershenson Memorial Scholarship in Screenwriting in 2014.

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While at UCLA, Rita had the opportunity to write The Cycle for UCLA’s Inaugural Future Storytelling Summer Institute, merging film through green screen with live theater in order to bring the story to life. As a director, Rita wrote and directed Bombay Skies, which screened in 23 film festivals worldwide and won numerous awards including Best Short Film at the 2008 La Femme International Film Festival in Los Angeles.