Here comes the Sun-dance

Two short films set in South India will premiere at the largest independent film festival in the US. The debutant directors talk about their first steps into filmmaking

- RANJITA GANESAN

With no feature films from India finding a place in Sundance’s official selections, it seemed like a quiet start to the year. But when the festival announced its short film programme a few days later, South India made a splash.

For the first time, two films featuring languages from the region will premiere at America’s largest independent film festival. Anooya Swamy’s Telugu-Kannada bilingual debut Pankaja, and Raman Nimmala’s Telugu-language O’Sey Balamma nudged their way ahead of 11,480 submissions from 164 countries and territories. They will be among 54 shorts selected for screening in Park City, Utah this January.

Heidi Zwicker, senior programmer for feature films and short films at Sundance, found both films visually dynamic and capable of immersing audiences in their cinematic worlds within their runtimes of less than 15 minutes.

“(They) were shot in the same country, but feel utterly distinct from one another: In the lives their characters inhabit as well as the style with which these talented directors explore those lives,” she said. The two directors, although trained at film schools in the US, returned to their roots to tell their first stories.

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