Spring 2025 Learning Collaborative Symposium Series 

In These Times: movements, media and science

Tuesday, April 1st at 6pm | FPH Main Lecture Hall    

Screening: TikTok, Boom followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Shalini Kantayya (94F)

Pizza will be served!

Dissecting one of the most influential platforms of the contemporary social media landscape, TIKTOK, BOOM, directed by CODED BIAS filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, examines the algorithmic, socio-political, economic, and cultural influences and impact of the history-making app. This rigorous exploration balances a genuine interest in the TikTok community and its innovative mechanics with a healthy skepticism around the security issues, global political challenges, and racial biases behind the platform. A cast of Gen Z subjects, helmed by influencer Feroza Aziz, remains at its center, making this one of the most needed and empathetic films exploring what it means to be a digital native.

With this new work, Kantayya, a Sundance Fellow, continues her engagement in the space where technology meets, amplifies, and opposes our humanity. Her incisive, current look at the power and complexity of tech continues to advance a conversation that is bettered by her careful stewardship.

About Shalini Kantayya

Two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker Shalini Kantayya (94F) directs fiction and nonfiction films that artfully marry the future of science with the future of story. TikTok, Boom, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was an official selection at SXSW. Her critically-acclaimed 2020 Sundance film, Coded Bias, was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens and globally on Netflix in April 2021. The film has been nominated for a Critics’ Choice, and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary. The film won Best Director at the Social Impact Media Awards, and the Visionary Filmmaker Award at GlobeDocs.  Both TikTok, Boom and Coded Bias received Emmy nominations. Shalini’s debut feature, Catching the Sun, released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Shalini is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and Concordia Studios Artist Fellow.