is a documentary filmmaker and theorist. She works as Assistant Professor at the Dept. of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California Los Angeles, USA. Her films document narratives that get overlooked in the mainstream imagination of the Indian nation. Her films have previously focused on Indian diasporas, displaced Kashmiri migrants and the widows of Vrindavan. Since 2009 she has been working in India's northeastern region where she has recently completed a documentary on the Kamakhya Temple and where she is researching early and contemporary Assamese cinema.

As a film theorist she is committed to writing about cinema practices that fall outside the normative narratives of mainstream Hindi cinema. She has previously written on Indo-Pak ties through documentary and the representation of gender in Indian cinema. Presently she is working on a book manuscript that explores non-canonical documentary practices from the Indian subcontinent. At UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures Aparna Sharma teaches documentary filmmaking combining film theory with cultural theory and visual ethnography.