SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL OF AMERICA
OFFICIAL 2020 WINNERS
OUTSTANDING DIRECTORIAL DEBUT FOR A FEATURE FILM
DEFINITION PLEASE
Los Angeles PREMIERE
Director: Sujata Day
Producer: Sujata Day, Cameron Fife, Datari Turner
Cast: Sujata Day, Ritesh Rajan, Anna Khaja, Jake Choi, Lalaine
Language: English
Country: United States
Runtime: 91 minutes
Year: 2020
FILM SYNOPSIS
A former Scribbs Spelling Bee champion must reconcile with her estranged brother when he returns home to help care for their sick mother.
SUJATA’S BIO
The daughter of a mechanical engineer and housewife, Sujata became involved in the performing arts at a very young age. She began with dance (ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, and East Indian folk and classical dance) and then became equally interested in acting, singing and musical theater. She continued to study and perform in school and community productions before heading west to pursue a professional acting career in Hollywood.
BEST MUSIC VIDEO - AUDIENCE CHOICE
REGARDLESS
Director: Priya Minhas
Producer: Sacha Noelle, Averi Smith
Cast: Anik Khan, Robin Dey
Language: English
Country: United States
Runtime: 3 minutes 25 seconds
Year: 2020
FILM SYNOPSIS
Directed by Priya Minhas, the video is inspired by Anik's experience in the U.S. and the paradox of being both invisible (underrepresented and counted out) and hypervisible (policed as an immigrant) at the same time. In the video, we see Khan moving through his city, balancing success and surveillance - a wider commentary on how people of color are treated with suspicion when they begin to claim any kind of success, “Regardless" is a song about succeeding despite the odds but it's also a love letter to the pockets of spaces and communities we make for ourselves in spite of it all.
DIRECTOR BIO
Priya is a director from London intent on telling authentic and inclusive stories that emerge from the margins. Her work has been featured in The Fader, Billboard and Teen Vogue among others.
Priya’s background as a writer is integral to her narrative-focused directorial style. She was also a contributing writer to The Good Immigrant USA (Little, Brown 2019), an American edition of an award-winning best-selling anthology exploring race. Her essay “How Not to Be”, explores some of the unspoken rules of brown girlhood.
Priya is currently based in New York where she produces and directs original content at Vevo. This includes live performances and short films for artists such as Billie Eilish, Yungblud, Doja Cat and Ella Mai. She is working on her first short film as well as a narrative portrait series, “Comfort Food,” exploring food as a love language in non-western cultures.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM - AUDIENCE CHOICE
SEVA
Director: Rippin Sindher
Producer: Gurinder Sindher, Rippin Sindher, Kenzie Woodrow
Language: English
Country: United States
Runtime: 15 minutes 46 seconds
Year: 2019
FILM SYNOPSIS
The fifth largest religion in the world, Sikhism is founded on the practice of selfless giving known as seva, yet the monotheistic faith remains one of the most misunderstood in America. Following the 2012 Oak Creek Temple massacre in Wisconsin, the next wave of Sikh activists and leaders combat rising xenophobia through their seva, creating impact on a national scale and challenging FBI statistics to reflect hate crimes against Sikhs.
DIRECTOR BIO
Rippin Sindher is an award-winning Sikh-American narrative and documentary filmmaker focused on South Asian stories for social change. She was the first HALF directing fellow on Ryan Murphy’s show “Ratched” for Netflix and is currently in post-production on her latest film “Broken Drawer,” starring Richa Moorjani (Never Have I Ever). Not having gone to film school, Rippin spent ten years working at the Directors Guild of America, learning from prominent directors, and simultaneously made her first hit short film, “The Hideout,” which she wrote, directed, acted in and produced. She was then hired to pen a feature adaptation of Kavita Daswani’s "The Village Bride of Beverly Hills." Her romcom digital pilot was a finalist for the Sundance New Voices Lab and the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. In the documentary space, Rippin’s anti-hate film entitled "SEVA," about xenophobia in America and Sikhs, earned Congressional recognition and won the Outstanding Documentary Award at the Micheaux Film Festival in February 2020. Rippin is a member of the Women in Film’s INSIGHT community for women of color filmmakers and recipient of the UCLA Women Leaders Award for service. In 2017, DissDash named her Top 50 Influential South Asian Artists. In 2019, she was a featured guest speaker at the annual Fresno Women’s Summit and launched KAUR Creative, a mentoring initiative for South Asian women and teen girls. She is currently developing "182," based on a true story.
BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM - AUDIENCE CHOICE
MA'S BUTTON BOX
Director: Anubhav Singh
Producer: Anubhav Singh
Cast: Achintya Malviya, Pranayam Pundir, Sushma Pundir
Language: English, Hindi
Country: India
Runtime: 3 minutes 30 seconds
Year: 2020
FILM SYNOPSIS
‘Ma’s Button Box’ is a poetic reminiscence of a son’s childhood memories with his mother through her closest possession.
The film captures this relentless passing of time and the prevailing of a bittersweet nostalgia.
DIRECTOR BIO
Anubhav is a film director based in Toronto. With education in fine art and film making, Anubhav thrives on understanding of both artistic and technical aspects of filmmaking. Experience of living and working in one of the oldest cities like Delhi as well as a growing global city like Toronto helps him in tastefully bringing the best of both worlds in his films. While 'Ma's Button Box' makes round in film festivals around the world, his upcoming directorial works include a webseries called 'Get Up Aisha' which is based on issues around mental health in south asian community in Canada.
BEST SHORT FILM - AUDIENCE CHOICE
BLOOD MOON
Director: Shruti Parekh
Producer: Melissa Scicluna, Shruti Parekh
Cast: Megh Basu, Deepti Gupta, Amber Romero, Shawn Denegre-Vaught
Language: English
Country: United States
Runtime: 9 minutes 46 seconds
Year: 2020
FILM SYNOPSIS
On the afternoon before a rare lunar eclipse, 13-year-old Maya prepares to go to her first high school party with her best friend, Luz, and her friend’s cute older brother, Nico—until she discovers she’s started her period. Navigating shock and embarrassment, Maya must decide how to move forward as she comes to terms with this new rite of passage.
DIRECTOR BIO
Shruti Parekh is a filmmaker, journalist, and photographer from Atlanta, currently pursuing her MFA in Film Directing & Production at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. She is a recipient of the Jack Nicholson Distinguished Student Director Award for 2020. Before attending UCLA, Shruti worked in film and video production in New York City for eight years. She was the assistant to acclaimed director Mira Nair on her 2013 film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and has worked on multiple award-winning documentaries as an Assistant Editor. As a freelance video producer, Shruti created digital video content for clients such as Food & Wine Magazine, NYLON, and WIRED as well as nonprofit organizations. Most recently, she was a Video Producer for Gizmodo Media Group’s news website, Splinter (formerly Fusion), focusing on social justice-driven digital news and features. Shruti has also directed, shot, & edited more than 15 music video. Shruti is interested in amplifying stories at the margins of American society and culture with creativity, heart, and wit.
BEST MUSIC VIDEO - JURY SELECTION
JEET
Director: Bibartan Ghosh
Producer: Adrian Gomes and Ismail Dudhwala
Cast: Ritviz, Rytasha Rathore, Dimple Paul, Veronica Vanij
Language: Hindi
Country: India
Runtime: 3 minutes 15 seconds
Year: 2018
FILM SYNOPSIS
The film is about 3 working class ladies of Mumbai, India. It's a fantasy day in their lives where irrespective of the economic strata they come from, they are out to have fun and enjoy life on their own terms.
BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM - JURY SELECTION
PASSAGE
Director: Asavari Kumar
Producer: Siddharth Zutshi, Asavari Kumar
Cast: Madame Gandhi, Asavari Kumar
Language: English
Country: India
Runtime: 5 minutes 15 seconds
Year: 2019
FILM SYNOPSIS
Finding herself in a state of limbo, an Indian woman revisits her immigration journey and voyages through a tempestuous emotional landscape of memory, identity, belonging and the illusion of the American Dream.
DIRECTOR BIO
Asavari is an Animation Director from New Delhi, India currently based in Los Angeles. She owns and operates the collective - Supernova Design through which she creates commercial and personal projects while collaborating with POC and women artists. Her client list includes - Google, Youtube, Slack & Disney amongst others.
Asavari’s films, installations and graphic narratives have been showcased at national and international film festivals and exhibition spaces including the Los Angeles Zine Fest, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Pune International Film Festival, La Gaîté Lyrique and Maison des Metallos. Her projects have also been featured in Kyoorius Design Magazine, Cartoon Brew, STASH and Animation Reporter Magazine.
Through her body of work, Asavari uses character driven storytelling to parse cultural and political identity and generate a discourse surrounding ideas of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ and find where her own narrative intersects with those around her.
Asavari holds a BFA in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), and an MFA in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts.
BEST SHORT FILM - JURY SELECTION
THE SHOWER
Director: Mahesh Pailoor
Producer: Pia Shah, Adil Chamakh
Cast: Pia Shah, Emily C. Chang
Writer: Pia Shah
Language: English
Country: United States
Runtime: 14 minutes 12 seconds
Year: 2019
FILM SYNOPSIS
Maya’s baby shower brings her oldest friend, June, back into her life for a day of unexpected reckonings.
NOTE: Pia Shah acted, produced and wrote this short while 8 months pregnant. This film grapples with the choices and anxieties of modern life and parenting as well as the complexities of female friendship.
DIRECTOR BIO
Mahesh Pailoor is an Indian-American writer/director based in Los Angeles. Raised in a small town in Maine, Mahesh studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His first short film, Little India, premiered at SXSW and screened at festivals around the world. He then furthered his training as a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute, where he was awarded the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award for the direction of his thesis film, Still Life.
Mahesh’s feature debut was the independent film, Brahmin Bulls, starring Sendhil Ramamurthy, Roshan Seth, and Academy Award Winner Mary Steenburgen. The film won the Audience Award at the San Diego Film Festival, the Jury Prize for Best American Indie at the Sonoma International Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the US and UK.
Along with scripted content, Mahesh has directed award-winning documentaries, commercials and branded content for clients such as Best Buy, Microsoft, Nintendo and Yamaha. He is an alumnus of the Disney/ABC Directing Program, Film Independent’s Screenwriting Lab and Project:Involve.
Recently Mahesh was accepted into the NBC Emerging Director Program and will be directing an episode of The Blacklist this season.