Biography
Deva is in pre-production with Finding Clive, a romantic comedy feature film, set to shoot in 2018, starring Shirley Henderson (Trainspotting, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Harry Potter) and Roger Allam (The Hippopotamus, The Thick of it, The Lady in the Van) with Alison Sterling of Ignition Films producing. Finding Clive was selected from over 7,200 feature film scripts as a quarterfinalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship 2013, second rounder at Austin Film Festival 2013 and 2012. Deva originally trained as an actress at Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a BP Scholarship and a few years later went on to spend the summer studying filmmaking at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, on a William and Eva Fox Fellowship. Her short films have been selected for many awards including a Silver Plaque at Chicago International Film Festival and a BBC New Filmmakers award. Fishy, distributed by Shorts International, was selected as one of twenty outstanding British short films for an online film festival in October 2014 in China and can be found on iTunes. In 2006, Deva was mentored by Gurinder Chadha for a year on the Guiding Lights scheme, which inspired her to set up the ICA Lab – a script development lab where she developed her feature film scripts, Baby, Finding Clive and The Garden. Deva is also developing Raya, a black comedy feature film, which was selected for an Advanced Mentoring Lab at the London Screenwriter's Festival 2015. In 2017 Deva was awarded a first class degree, studying an MA in feature filmmaking at Bath Spa University, where she focused on developing Finding Clive and made an award winning teaser trailer for the film. Most recently Deva has completed PRACTICE, 9mins, starring Shaniaz Hama Ali and Amrou Al-Kadhi written by Mandy Lee, which has been selected by Festival Formula who are developing a festival strategy for the film.
