Liliana is an award-winning biracial Indian American actress, writer, and filmmaker who is passionate about women-led stories exploring identity and empowerment, told with a mix of humor and heart. Her directorial debut short film Ride or Die premiered at the Imagine This Women’s International Film Festival, where it won Best Thriller. Break/Fix (writer/producer/lead), a short film about bi-racial identity and beauty standards, premiered at the Oscar-qualifying Cleveland International Film Festival and won The Next Great Filmmaker Award at the 2024 Berkshire International Film Festival. She is the proud writer/lead of three feature films that had network television premieres.
Her latest short dark comedy, Cherry Bomb (writer/director), is currently in post-production. She created Period Piece, an award-winning comedic web series that explores women in different periods of history… having their periods. Seasons one and two have over 1.6 million views on YouTube and won Best Original Comedy Web Series on Elizabeth Banks’ comedy site WhoHaHa. Additionally, Liliana was one of five finalists on WhoHaHa for Favorite Impersonation alongside fellow nominees Kate McKinnon and Melissa McCarthy. She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Please List the Title of Your Film at BIFF 2026
Ride or Die
What was your first experience with film and how did it influence your first project?
My first experience with film was flying out to LA at 18 to work as a Production Assistant on an indie feature called Nesting. I found incredible mentors on that project and fell in love with filmmaking. The cast and crew were all incredibly kind, and it was such a fun set to work on. I’ve taken that mentality with me into my projects: we are so unbelievably lucky to get to make movies for a living, so while I expect everyone to work hard and collaborate to bring the project to life, it should be a fun, rewarding experience for everyone involved.
