Shirin Bhandari

Writer, Photographer, Documentary Filmmaker

Philippines

Shirin Bhandari is an independent writer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker based in Metro Manila. She graduated from the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts. Her work has been featured in the Pulitzer Center, SCMP, 1 in 6 by 2030, Der Greif, Women's Media Center, Slate, CNN, Roads and Kingdoms, Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and VICE, among others. Bhandari is a Logan Nonfiction Fellow, a VII Academy alumnus, and a member of the nonprofit group Women Photograph.

She has produced documentaries for various humanitarian agencies in the UN, USAID, Save the Children, Action Against Hunger, EUAID, and CARE. Her stories have touched on important topics on war and conflict, displacement, malnutrition, HIV, LGBTQ/gender-based issues, and climate change.

Bhandari’s documentary photography project, The Show Goes On, was featured in a book and a festival in Heidelberg, Germany, in the first half of 2024.
Her feature film, “People of the Lake,” was a finalist of the IF/Then development lab of the Tribeca Film Institute and supported by the Logan Nonfiction program, Asia Docs, and the Film Development Council of the Philippines

Her current film, “The Fishermen Snared in the Scarborough Shoal Dispute,” is supported by the
Pulitzer Center, SCMP, and Roads and Kingdoms. It had its first US Screening at the DC Environmental Film Festival last March 2024 and returned to the island of San Salvador for a special screening for the fishing community on World Ocean Day. It was also screened in the “If the Walls Could Talk”, a Pulitzer Center event in Escolta, Manila, in December 2024, & the Makassar Writers Festival in Indonesia on June 1, 2025.

Bhandari was a finalist for the Documentary Award for her project “This Is My Life”, Objectifs, Center for Photography & Film, Singapore, last June 2025.

Assignments? [email protected]

Portfolio
1in6by2030
Rey Ravago: This Is My Life - 1 in 6 by 2030

Manila is one of the world's most densely populated cities, bustling day and night, where many people live paycheck to paycheck. Sixty-five-year-old Rey Ravago is one of them. To make ends meet, he takes on many roles: massage therapist, part-time street sweeper, hairstylist, and, for the past 40 years, drag performer.

https://youtu.be/88DeWptfMZw?si=qrkFCRRYy-ExJ-ql
Pulitzer Center, SCMP, Roads and Kingdoms
10/07/2023
The fishermen snared in the Scarborough Shoal dispute

A long-running territorial dispute between China and the Philippines over two rocky features in the South China Sea has impacted the livelihoods of Filipinos who have fished in the area for centuries. The Scarborough Shoal – also known as Bajo de Masinloc or Panatag Shoal and which China refers to as Huangyang Island – is located about 220km (137 miles) west of the Philippines’ largest island of Luzon. China, which claims its sovereignty over the whole of the South China Sea, has been...

Queer Festival Heidelberg
05/02/2022
Shirin Bhandari - The Show Goes On

In her long term documentation, Shirin Bhandari makes friends with the Golden Gays, a group of elderly drag performers in Manila. Her intimate snapshot portraits and dressing room scenes initiate a visual and emotional understanding for the lives, relationships and community of her protagonists.

Slate Magazine
10/30/2017
In Overcrowded Manila, Cemeteries Are Homes for the Dead and the Living

Each week, Roads & Kingdoms and Slate publish a new dispatch from around the globe. For more foreign correspondence mixed with food, war, travel, and photography, visit its online magazine or follow @roadskingdoms on Twitter. Carolyn fetches a small bucket of water to fill the concrete vases. "Bend the stems," she says.

Explore Parts Unknown
04/04/2017
The Perfect Day in Amritsar

The sacred land of turbans and ghee, Amritsar is a city of about a million in the state of Punjab, in northern India. It is situated across the Pakistani border on the Grand Trunk Road, one of Asia's longest and oldest routes.

Roads & Kingdoms
01/05/2016
Dinner on the Grand Trunk Road - Roads & Kingdoms

Amritsar was the end of the line. For years I travelled-and dreaded-the same route from Delhi to my father's northern hometown. It was the last stop by train along the plains of the Indian section of the Punjab region, and a gateway to the Himalayas. The train would start from Delhi filled with locals.