Shorts A

Anu

Director: Pulkit Arora

Cast: Prabha Ravi

Language: English, Hindi, Maori

Length: 13 minutes 6 seconds

Year Of The Film: 2023

Premiere status: East Coast Premiere

Synopsis:

When a recent widow moves to New Zealand from India, she's forced to confront her grief by completing an ordinary ritual in an extraordinary circumstance: quarantine.

Director: Pulkit Arora

Pulkit Arora is a New Zealand-Indian filmmaker. His directorial debut Milk Toffee screened at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, amongst 11 others.

In his screenwriting career prior, he has developed originals and led writing rooms for Disney+ and Netflix. He also writes and hosts the film criticism series Still Awesome for Netflix's YouTube channel.

Loo

Director: Chanakya Vyas

Cast: Avani Vamshaja, Virginia Rodrigues

Language: English, Kannada

Length: 14 minutes 22 seconds

Year Of The Film: 2023

Premiere Status: International premiere (previously won at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival)

Synopsis:

Struggling to find a place to pee, a domestic helper working in an apartment building decides to secretly use the toilet in the house where she works, leading to the breaking of unsaid norms between her and the employer

Director: Chanakya Vyas

Chanakya Vyas is a playwright, theatremaker, educator, and filmmaker. He was the Artistic Director of Indian Ensemble from 2018-22. His awards include the first runner-up at the Sultan Padamsee Playwriting Award (2010) and the Charles Wallace India Trust Award (2014) to study Devised Theatre and Performance at the London International School of Performing Arts, UK. He has received grants from the India Foundation for the Arts and Science Gallery in Bengaluru.

Rhino Charge

Director: Abhiroop Basu

Cast: Geetanjali Kulkarni

Language: Bengali

Length: 25 minutes

Year Of The Film: 2023

Synopsis:

RAZIA, a maid turned care-giver finds herself in a precarious situation, when she makes her first attempt at bathing a wheelchair-bound veteran of the Indian Army, in the midst of a personal tragedy – set in Calcutta, at the backdrop of the various wars going around worldwide.

Director: Abhiroop Basu

Prague Film School Alumni and Alt Studio Tuscany (Italy) Alumni, Abhiroop Basu was the youngest Indian (age 21) to represent India at Cannes in 2016. His films Meal (Starring Adil Hussain) and Laali (Starring Pankaj Tripathi) went to over 70 International Film Festivals worldwide fetching multiple awards and accolades. Meal was the only Indian Film to represent India at the prestigious Oscar Qualifying 45th Odense International Film Festival, Denmark (2019). His more recent films include a Dark Comedy 'Rhino Charge' starring the popular Geetanjali Kulkarni and 'Gudgudi' starring Rajshri Deshpande, now touring festivals worldwide.

Currently, he is on course to direct his first feature in Bollywood helmed by the popular, National Award-winning Producer Shabbir Boxwala (Shershaah) among other things.

Stitched

Director: Lorena Lourenco

Cast: Pratima Mani, Vick Krishna, McKenna Cox

Language: English, Hindi, Tamil

Length: 15 minutes 38 seconds

Year Of The Film: 2023

Premiere status: New York Premiere

Synopsis:

A South Asian diasporic woman, tired of dating people who can’t keep up with her mutable cultural identity, decides to “Frankenstein” together the ideal partner.

Director: Lorena Lourenco

Lorena Lourenço is a proud Latina immigrant and an award-winning writer-director from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a USC School of Cinematic Arts alumna and her latest short has been licensed by HBOmax as well as selected for competition at LALIFF (where it screened as best of fest), Outfest, Inside Out, Out On Film, Official Latino Film Festival, and several others. She was selected for The Orchard Project's episodic lab, where she workshopped her series "Sula and I.” That same series has Diane Guerrero attached to star and has received initial support from Mark Duplass.

XO

Director: Samrat DasGupta

Cast: Kamakshi Bhat

Language: Bengali, English, Hindi

Length: 24 minutes 50 seconds

Year Of The Film: 2023

Premiere status: East Coast premiere

Synopsis:

Rumi, a poetry-loving recluse, is most ‘at home’ at the city library. One day she chances upon an old, open game of XO (tic tac toe) in a forgotten corner. Curious, she scribbles a move which is reciprocated the next day, and thus a game ensues.

Over days, each game ends in a draw. And Rumi is always greeted with a new game with the first move. As poetic romanticism plays out in her own life, Rumi falls in love with the idea of this playfully mysterious person. Their playful relationship continues until Rumi is given a chance to win and she takes it, going one up.

The games stop thereafter - there is no new XO. Rumi does not understand why and is disappointed, worried, and eventually heartbroken. Finally, she realizes something that changes her life and helps her come out of her shell.

Director: Samrat DasGupta

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Samrat has rented apartments in Delhi,

Mumbai, Bangkok, and New York. A senior pro in the advertising industry, Samrat has worked with world-class creative minds and technicians in various geographies creating multi-lingual global campaigns that have run in markets spanning from Latin America to Japan.

Samrat set up Lovechildren Films, to make “cinema born out of love” and has since directed many ad films and 3 short films that have been awarded and appreciated in festivals across the US, Germany, China, and India.

Samrat’s latest - XO, a romantic short, is creating flutters in the festival circle, and, in very early days, has been selected in festivals worldwide including a Finalist at Korea International SFF & Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023, LA ShortsFest, New York International Short Film Festival, Vienna International Film Awards, & IFFSA Toronto, so far. Samrat wants to direct the world back to love :)

What Just Happened

Director: Arunansh Bhatt

Cast: Arfi Laamba, Neha Lal, Som G Ganguly, Somya Chawla, Laxmikant, Saumitra Shukla, Bhavya Dwivedi, Zaid Siddiqui, Zoya Kidwai, Pradeep Shivhare, Akkshat Pandit

Language: Hindi

Length: 19 minutes 35 seconds

Year Of The Film: 2023

Premiere status: International Premiere

Synopsis:

A regular family dinner in an Indian household but with a twist of matriarchy.

Director: Arunansh Bhatt

Arunansh Bhatt is a filmmaker and music composer from Lucknow, India. Post completing his engineering from VIT (Vellore), he quit his corporate job to become a full-time musician when he was 21 years old. Since then he has composed the music for several ad films, documentaries, short and feature films. He also worked as the additional composer/music producer on many Netflix India projects like Sacred Games, Leila, and AK vs AK.

His love for cinema ultimately led him to write and direct his debut short film, Chamachh, which went to several International film festivals all over the world, and upon release, grew organically on YouTube, garnering more than 1 million views till date.

His next direction project was a music video, Tore Bina, produced by Lotus Visual Productions, UK, and sung by popular singer Shalmali Kholgade. The film was based on the issue of transgender awareness and got an overwhelmingly positive response from the global LGBTQ+ community.

His upcoming directorial is an ensemble drama short film, starring Arfi Laamba of 'Slumdog Millionaire' and 'Singh is Bliing' fame.