Loveleen Tandan is an Indian film director and casting director. She was credited as the co-director of the four time Golden Globe, seven time BAFTA Award and eight Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire, for which she shared a New York Film Critics Online Award, Rotterdam International Film Festival Award and Amanda Awards, Norway, of "Best Director" with Danny Boyle. She has also been the Casting Director for several other films, including the Golden Lion winning and Golden Globe nominated Monsoon Wedding and the BAFTA Award nominated Brick Lane. She has been a casting consultant for the Gotham Award and Independent Spirit Award nominated film The Namesake. Loveleen has featured in the prestigious "Annual Women's Big Impact Report", an initiative of Hollywood's Variety magazine, which profiles women that have made pathbreaking contributions in world entertainment.
Loveleen Tandan first worked with Deepa Mehta on Earth, and later worked with Mira Nair on three films: Monsoon Wedding , Vanity Fair and The Namesake. She was also the casting director for Brick Lane, directed by Sarah Gavron and adapted from Monica Ali's novel of the same name. Tandan's most major credit is Slumdog Millionaire, where she initially began as one of the film's casting directors but was, during production on the film, designated as the "Co-Director: India" by Danny Boyle in recognition of her significant contributions in the making of the film. Boyle explained his reasoning behind the credit by stating it was "because I had her there every day, and I kind of relied on her enormously to make sure I didn't make any big mistakes, and obviously, translation for the kids. And translation of the text because obviously, if you translate a line of Simon's literally into Hindi, a seven-year-old is just going to go… So, they had to be given a line that was the equivalent in Hindi." Tandan herself has stated that she was given the co-director credit after she "suggested to Danny and Simon Beaufoy, the writer of Slumdog, that it was important to do some of it in Hindi to bring the film alive. They asked me to come up with Hindi dialogues which I, of course, instantly agreed to do. And as we drew closer to the shoot date, Danny asked me to step in as the co-director." The film won eight Academy Awards, five Critics' Choice Awards, four Golden Globes and seven BAFTA Awards. Tandan's work as co-director of the film was recognised by the New York Film Critics Online Awards, which awarded "Best Director" to "Danny Boyle with Loveleen Tandan".
