The story follows Pankaja, a woman who, along with her daughter Lalli, desperately navigates the city slums and bureaucracy of Bangalore in a quest to locate her missing husband.
Year of production 2026 Length 14' Countries USA, India Shooting FormatDigital Aspect Ratio 1.66:1 Dialogue Telugu, Kannada
Director Anooya Swamy Producers Anooya Swamy, Nakirekanti Swamy, Archana Swamy, Vindhya Gupta Writer Anooya Swamy Director of Photography Luke Kao Composer Bharath Kashyap Original Music JAAGO Lifafa Editors Anooya Swamy, Maria Belu Poncio Costume Designer Siri Lambu Sound Designer Anirban Borthakur Colorist Aaryaman Kutty Cast Harshini Boyalla, Padmashree G.
Festival selections Sundance Film Festival 2026, USA - World Premiere SXSW London 2026, UK Milano Film Fest 2026, Italy Festival Internacional de Cine de Huesca 2026, Spain The Norwegian Short Film Festival 2026 Raindance Film Festival 2026, UK - Best Live Action Short Award FEST - New Directors/New Films Festival 2026, Portugal Palm Springs International ShortFest 2026, USA - Best Student U.S. Short Award Shorts International Film Festival 2026, Italy DokuFest 2026, Kosovo Director's Statement 'Pankaja' was written to bring into form my curiosity and need to explore the idea of seeing how early motherhood and the life of a child are affected by the absence of a man, drawing from the little I remember from my childhood, like many first-time filmmakers. The many men I grew up around were constantly in occupations of illegal or informal work; many who leave home for work and rarely return, which had me question how you can report a missing person who is doing something illegal. What are the moralities of a man who does an honest man’s work in an illegal setting? Can a woman and her daughter survive the journey of finding the truth in a system that is designed to work against people like her? The number of undocumented workers going "missing" is officially low, but the stories of wives and children of such workers tell another story. This is my attempt to amplify a story as such in this film. The film was shot in real locations, with a local crew in India and mostly non-actors from the communities we want to represent. The film, at its core, is about truth-telling. I wanted to examine how systems of power, family, and violence live inside one person. I often catch myself finding systems of government and bureaucracy hilarious, as the irony is often lost on them. I made this movie to laugh at myself, who is also part of such a system, the Indian bureaucracy, and to make a case for empathy for women who persevere.
