Bengaluru: City-based filmmaker Anooya Swamy’s short film, Pankaja, has been selected for screening at Sundance Film Festival, to be held from Jan 22 to Feb 1 at Salt Lake City, Utah, US.Pankaja will be the first Kannada short film to be officially screened at the prestigious festival and Anooya the first Kannadiga filmmaker to achieve this feat. Pankaja’s storyline revolves around a woman, who along with her daughter, searches for her missing husband in the slums of Bengaluru.Born and raised in the city, Anooya is currently pursuing an MFA in Film and TV Production at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She was a teaching assistant to Oscar-winning director Spike Lee and is a recipient of several prestigious scholarships, including BAFTA scholarship, Ang Lee scholarship and Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship.Anooya’s work blends dark humour with social critique and explores trauma, grief and moral ambiguity through intimate, character-driven narratives.
