Gidalya Pictures is an award-winning documentary production company based in New York City and founded by  filmmaker Alexandra Shiva in 2001.

Alexandra Shiva

Alexandra Shiva is an award-winning filmmaker, known for crafting intimate character-driven cinema verité documentaries.

Alexandra most recently directed and produced ONE SOUTH: PORTRAIT OF A PSYCH UNIT about an inpatient program that specializes in treating college students. The two-part film premiered on HBO in 2024.

Her previous work includes EACH AND EVERY DAY, a film about youth mental health, which premiered on MTV in 2021. She directed and produced THIS IS HOME, a portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in Baltimore, Maryland and struggling to find their footing. The film premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2018, where it won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary. The film also won a Columbia-duPont award and was broadcast on EPIX.

Alexandra also directed and produced HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO, which follows a group of teenagers and young adults on the autism spectrum preparing for an iconic American rite of passage — a spring formal. The Peabody Award winning film premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and aired on HBO to great critical acclaim. It has since been adapted into an award-winning musical, which premiered on Broadway in the fall of 2023.

Alexandra’s second documentary STAGEDOOR follows five kids through a musical theater summer camp program in the Catskills. STAGEDOOR premiered at SXSW in 2005, had its theatrical debut at Film Forum in New York in 2006 and aired on Sundance Channel.

After spending extensive time in India, Alexandra launched her documentary career producing and directing BOMBAY EUNUCH, a feature-length documentary that follows a makeshift family of eunuchs as they struggle to survive in modern Bombay. In 2001, the film was awarded Best Documentary at New York’s New Festival and the Special Jury Award at the Florida Film Festival and was released theatrically.

Alexandra graduated from Vassar College with a BA in Art History. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Directors Guild of America.

Lindsey Megrue

Lindsey Megrue is a director and creative producer with almost two decades of experience creating documentary films that explore the pivotal issues shaping our world with creativity and nuance.

Lindsey directed and produced the forthcoming ONE SOUTH: PORTRAIT OF A PSYCH UNIT, an observational two-part film about an inpatient psychiatric unit for young adults, which will premiere on HBO June 2024. She previously produced EACH AND EVERY DAY (2021), a film about youth mental health, for MTV. She also produced THIS IS HOME (2018), a feature-length film about Syrian refugees resettling in Baltimore, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary.

She has worked on many critically acclaimed programs for PBS, including eight episodes of the award-winning series AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. She was a Field Producer for the Emmy-nominated series CANCER: THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES. She co-produced KOCH, a feature-length documentary about former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, which opened theatrically in 2013 and broadcast on PBS’s POV. Additionally, Lindsey has directed for the highly-rated PBS series FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

In addition to her work in film, Lindsey has created digital content for The New York Times’ Retro Report, The New Yorker, and The Marshall Project, including the Emmy-nominated series WE ARE WITNESSES about the criminal justice system.

She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Documentary Producers Alliance, a 2017 Impact Partners Producing Fellow and a graduate of Smith College.