Mindy Kaling and Adam J. Graves Unpack Their Oscar-Nominated Short ‘Anuja’: “You Don’t See Stories Like This”
Within 28 minutes of sending Mindy Kaling their short film about the lives of two young girls in India, Adam J. Graves and wife Suchitra Mattai heard back.
“Even though, tonally, this is so different than other projects I’ve worked on,” Kaling tells The Hollywood Reporter of boarding the short as a producer, “I just felt like there is a spiritual link between me and these kinds of female coming-of-age stories that Anuja is.”
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Alongside the likes of Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Guneet Monga, Kaling signed up and put the film on the front foot this awards season. It’s worked: Netflix nabbed the film, and the team are heading to the Oscars this year as nominees for best live action short.
Anuja, directed by Graves and co-written by Mattai, is the story of a gifted nine-year-old girl (Sajda Pathan) who works in a garment factory in New Delhi. When she is offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance to attend school, she is forced to make a heart-wrenching decision that will determine her and her sister Palak’s (Ananya Shanbhag) fate.
Pathan was cast with the help of the performing arts program at an Indian NGO, the Salaam Baalak Trust, which provides education, basic literacy, schooling and full-care facilities for children. “I’m happy,” the young star told THR about the film’s international recognition. “I never knew what the Oscars were — it was only after the [crew] told me that it’s huge. I’m very happy to represent India at the Oscars. It’s a beautiful story of two sisters and the love they have for each other. I think the audience connects with that.”
Anuja was borne out of Graves and Mattai’s own shock at child labor statistics around the globe. But there is also a vital, childlike playfulness when it comes to a coming-of-age story, says Kaling. “So often, when we see children in India in these really challenging circumstances, viewers make big generalizations about India. I loved how nuanced this was. I love how it’s not grim.”
Kaling and Graves unpacked Anuja‘s Oscar hopes for THR, bringing celebrity names on board their “scrappy,” shoestring-budgeted project and their interpretations of its ambiguous ending: “We couldn’t have a Hollywood or Bollywood ending. That’s not the point of the film.”
Mindy, Adam: congratulations on your Oscar nomination. How did Anuja arrive at your door?
MINDY KALING Suchitra [Mattai], who is a visual artist I had been following for years, I just emailed her out of the blue because I saw her work and I wanted to buy one of her pieces. And we sort of struck up an online friendship. She emailed me because I had contacted her before and she said, “Hey, I made this film with my husband. Would you watch it? It’s a short film.” And she told me the log line and I mean, it did not seem comedic to me! So when I watched I was like, I don’t know how helpful I can be when I come on board. And when I saw it, it was so beautiful and it was just so well made. The performances… I love coming of age stories, and even though tonally, this is so different than the other projects that I’ve worked on, I just felt like there is a spiritual link between me and these kinds of female coming-of-age stories that Anuja is.
ADAM J. GRAVES It’s funny because now we have all these incredible people like Mindy Kaling and Guneet Monga and Priyanka [Chopra Jonas] as EPs attached to it, and with Netflix and everything, it feels like this big thing. But really, it was just me, my wife, and a group of small friends of friends of ours in Delhi. It was a small, little scrappy thing that we put together over the course of five days on a shoestring budget.
It’s a showcase of love between sisters, the fight for female education in India. What themes did you want to highlight on an international stage?
KALING Obviously, something that’s very important to me is this plight of girls’ education around the world, but particularly in India. Seeing something like this, stories about personal ambitions versus duty and loyalty are very fascinating to me. You don’t see [stories like this] that often for girls who are 9, 10, 11 years old. I just love the focus on this choice she has to make. But I also love that it’s joyous. So often, when we see children in India in these really challenging circumstances, viewers make big generalizations about India. I loved how nuanced this was. I love how it’s not grim. These girls are so scrappy and funny. Even the guy who runs the garment shop is very funny. There’s something very nuanced about the execution of the short and the script, which is so well written and elegantly underwritten. I thought Adam and Suchitra did an amazing job with it.
GRAVES Issues of labor have always been pretty central to my wife and I. Her grandparents and great-grandparents were brought from Uttar Pradesh to Guyana by the British to work the sugar plantations. After slavery was abolished, the British looked around to the colonies, especially in India, for people to replace that labor source. So her family was brought as indentured laborers to Guyana. I have a background in South Asian Studies. There was a five-year period where I spent a lot of my time in India, studied at the Banaras Hindu University.
So when we were thinking about a coming-of-age story, we were thinking about these labor issues. We encountered a statistic that my wife just happened upon and it was like the spark: one out of 10 kids globally is engaged in child labor. It struck us as an insanely high number. One hundred and sixty million is half of the population of the United States … So that led us into some research. We started off by reading scholarship about child labor in the garment sector in particular and in South Asia. The next thing you know, we were doing site visits in Delhi and meeting with kids who were either still engaged in work or who are now attending school.
Adam, can you go into more detail about the amazing story of how your two young actresses were cast?
GRAVES We were very lucky in that regard. We felt like we would be able to portray a more authentic picture of this world if we could cast from the community itself, but we also knew that that presented certain problems, because a lot of the NGOs are working with kids whose parents are reluctant to send them to school because they depend upon the income that their kids make. We didn’t want to disturb the work of the different NGOs. So the Salaam Baalak Trust was unique because it was founded by the family of Mira Nair — the famous, distinguished, international film director who made the movie Salaam Bombay! in the 1980s. Her mother then established this foundation to help street children. Because of that background, they have themselves a very robust performing arts program.
They had a lot of kids who were interested in auditioning for the part. We had a casting director in Mumbai who was getting all these professional kid actors. But then we were also collecting audition tapes from the Salaam Baalak Trust and one or two other nonprofits and residential homes for kids. And Sajda’s came in and it just blew our minds. As soon as we saw it, we didn’t watch a single tape after that, because it was just so different from everything else. We could just feel her past experience, in her eyes and in the way she moved and in her body. We knew that she was the right person. Anaya had never acted before. But she is a Bharatanatyam dancer, a form of classical Indian dance. That form of dance is very expressive, the moves that one performs with the eyes, as it were. … We were just blown away by what she was able to express with her face.
Their portrayal of sisters is so convincing.
GRAVES Ananya has a younger brother, Sajda has an older sister. When we brought them together a few days before filming to bond and develop that relationship, from the moment they met, they were just inseparable. We all lived together at a hotel in Delhi for eight or nine days. They always traveled in the same van, they would take naps, sleep in each other’s arms. It was very, very cute, I have to say, to see them bond like that.
I wondered if I could ask you both about your interpretations of the ending. Anuja is caught between her sister and taking this exam, and Palak injures herself while sewing. How do you imagine what happens next?
KALING I mean, one of the delicious things about this is as someone who is a filmmaker and someone who creates TV is like, my imagination starts going with all of the different possibilities. I love that kind of ending. Because to me, as a writer, I love thinking: “Where could this go?” Of course, I have asked Adam, “Would you turn this into a feature? Would you turn this into a series about these girls, a mini-series?” I’ve never flat-out asked Adam what he thinks. But it’s posing this question of, wow — can you believe that this girl has to make this choice? He can probably speak about the ending way more elegantly than I can.
GRAVES One of the things that we kept on hearing in our research is that so many kids and their families are put in this terrible position of having to choose between, on the one hand, pursuing an education and possibly enhancing their prospects in life and their futures and on the other, contributing to the material wellbeing of their families who often live in abject poverty and depend upon that contribution. To me, that seems like an impossible choice. It seems like a choice that no kid should ever have to face. I felt like if our film could bring the audience to that point and feel that existential dread that those kids have to endure, I think that would be the most powerful thing we could possibly do. I knew from the beginning, as soon as I started writing the screenplay, that we couldn’t have a Hollywood or Bollywood ending. That’s not the point of the film.
And I do want to ask about your Oscar nomination. I know it’s not what you do this job for, but it must be a lovely cherry on top. Were you expecting it or has the reception come as a surprise?
GRAVES Let me put it this way: When we made the film, I knew that we were capturing something really special. These kids were just giving us such an incredible performance. It was like capturing lightning in a bottle. But you also have very low expectations. You don’t know if people are going to watch this film. You don’t know if you’re making it just for your kids and your parents. [If it doesn’t perform], then it’s just practice. It’s me growing as a filmmaker and learning about the craft. When we started off in the festival run, we didn’t get into the first, top festival that we submitted to. We thought, maybe this is just something we’re gonna enjoy ourselves. I don’t think anybody anticipated that we’d be getting this kind of attention. I think these kids and their performances deserve the attention, but you never expect it.
It’s frustrating, but getting names such as Mindy or Priyanka on board makes people pay attention.
GRAVES Yeah, and I will say with Mindy, celebrity attachments are a thing because you do anything you can to amplify the story to garner a little attention. But in her case, she’s been so much more. She’s really rolled up her sleeves and gone all in on the film, making sure it gets distribution, seen by the right people, shouting from the mountain tops. And that has been huge. … These are people who have incredibly busy lives. She’s got at least two shows simultaneously running right now, one about to come out. But if my memory serves me well, the film is 22 minutes and I think we got an email back [from Kaling] after 28 minutes. I think anybody who makes it in this business is just tremendously lucky. There’s so many talented people out there making incredible things that, quite frankly, will probably not get noticed because it’s really hard to break through. So to have a champion like Mindy and Guneet and now Priyanka Chopra is really huge.
Mindy, as you pointed out, this is quite different to what you’re known for. You’re a comedy queen. Would you like to do more in this vein?
KALING I’m a member of the Academy so I have the Academy app, and I was watching, I’m Still Here with Fernanda Torres and … I’m like, this could not be more different. I find so much inspiration from drama and from stories told outside of this country and yes, I would love to explore writing a drama. What really gets me inspired [is] seeing things like Anuja and being a part of it, and watching Adam and Suchitra’s process. I feel like my job is to just constantly learn. I have access now to so many amazing artists, and can literally just ask them questions. And that’s what I’ve been doing with Adam, who went with not very much money to India and shot something like this, cast it. Finding all the location scouts when you’re based in Los Angeles, I found it incredibly inspiring.
Will you be repping Anuja at the Oscars come March?
KALING I would love to. We haven’t quite talked about it yet. But either way, it will be a really exciting night at the Dolby.
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