Rajneel Singh

Rajneel Singh is a New Zealand director, writer and editor who has been working in the film and television industry since 2006. An ethnic Fijian-Indian, Raj is descended from a family who owned one of Fiji’s earliest movie theaters. His passion for filmmaking developed in his early twenties during the DV revolution, while shooting low budget action videos with the help of stuntmen friends and local martial artists.

Raj first garnered attention as a filmmaker with his first short THE FANIMATRIX: RUN PROGRAM, a zero-budget fan-film set in THE MATRIX universe which became a pre-YouTube viral video phenomenon and won the approval of THE MATRIX producer Barrie Osborne and directors The Wachowskis. His second short film BIG BAD WOLVES - a black comedy fantasy - awarded him “Best Director” at the Ohakune Big Mountain Festival, “Best Emerging Filmmaker” at the Rotorua Magma Festival (both in 2006), “Best Short Film” at the Donestk International Film Festival in 2009 and screened at the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in 2011. In 2010, Raj was one of five finalists in the Tourism New Zealand “Your Big Break” Competition and teamed up with producers Barrie Osborne and Catherine Madigan to create his third short BLANK SPACES which won “Best Short Film” at the MBF Indian Film Festival in Melbourne.

Raj has worked professionally in the field of music videos and TV commercials over the last ten years, having started as a director’s assistant at The Sweet Shop. He has also done promo-work and visual design work on a variety of live theatrical productions including THE GENERATION OF Z - the hit zombie-apocalypse interactive theater show which ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014 and London’s East End in 2015 as well as the Rob Tapert-produced mega-spectacle PLEASUREDOME in Auckland, 2017. Raj also found success as an editor for film and TV, cutting on numerous TV documentaries for Maori Television, The Discovery Channel and Nat-Geo as well as narrative shows such as the hit drama series THIS IS PIKI and the comedy series FIND ME A MAORI BRIDE and has worked as post-production supervisor on a number of projects as well.

Most recently, however, he has migrated away from post-production and taken up directing full-time. He has acquired credits on shows such as FIND ME A MAORI BRIDE (directing 2 episodes), the award-winning docu-drama series I AM (directing 3 episodes) and the big-budget children’s television series CUSTARD’S WORLD (directing one whole season and a half-hour TV special). He intends to pursue work as a director, primarily in the field of genre television and feature films.

Raj currently has several feature-projects in development including OPERATION: RAMBU! - a feature documentary in pre-production with the NZ Film Commission - as well as LEAVE ME COLD - a horror project with DEATHGASM producer Morgan Leigh Stewart. He is also attached to direct the upcoming Netflix India limited drama series TURTUK, due to shoot in Romania and Kazakhstan in 2022.