Why the Oscar-nominated short ‘Anuja’ resonated with producer Mindy Kaling, executive producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Mindy Kaling said she will often get sent coming-of-age stories about young South Asian women in her capacity as founder of the production company Kaling International. But she doesn’t always put her name behind something if it’s not the right fit. Fortunately, Kaling had no such issues with Anuja, the Oscar-nominated short film from director Adam J. Graves and producer Suchitra Mattai.
“I just fell in love with it,” Kaling said in a recent interview with the filmmakers (watch it below). “The way that you could tell the story in 22 minutes was just really incredible.”
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But what separated Anuja from other projects, Kaling said, is its hopeful message amid difficult circumstances for the main characters, two sisters, aged 9 and 17, who work in a back-alley garment factory.
“The situations that the characters are in as literal child laborers are upsetting, but there is such a surprising joyfulness [about how the story is told],” said Kaling. “I am a person who I feel like one of the reasons I work in comedy is that it’s gotten me through really hard times. But I do feel like at the end of the day, when I sit in front of my TV, I don’t want to feel like someone is lecturing me. I want to be entertained. And what wonderful art in film and TV does is put you in a situation where you’d be like, ‘I’m a little resistant to this.’ But you get pulled in and learn something because you’re being so entertained. And that’s what I love about Anuja.”
The effort with which Anuja highlights the resiliency of its characters, especially Anuja (played by Sajda Pathan), is something Mattai said was foundational for the project.
“We knew we wanted to tell a story that didn’t paint the girls as victims but rather as heroines of their own story,” she said. “And so throughout the story, with their decision-making, they have agency. They hold the key to their future right in their hands. And so I know it was really important for Adam and in his writing, to kind of tell a universal story through the lens of child labor in in Delhi.”
Anuja, now streaming on Netflix, was produced in partnership with the Salaam Baalak Trust. This group provides resources to street children in India to ensure they have access to fundamental human rights. (Before starring in the film, Pathan was a beneficiary of the Salaam Baalak Trust’s work.) The film has been acclaimed for several months, including Best Live-Action Short honors at the 2024 HollyShorts Film Festival. Along the way, significant figures like producer Kaling and executive producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas also supported the project.
“I think we’re very blessed to be able to be a part of not just this industry but also tell stories that move people and shift culture,” Chopra Jones said to the filmmakers in a separate interview (watch it exclusively below). “You’ve very successfully been able to tell a story which is so often not told the way you tell it. You told it with joy; you told it with resilience. You gave a little window into what this world looks like, the products we consume every day, and where they come from. Little fingers sometimes make them, and they have to give up their futures for these goods, and I think that window and that lens into this story was so powerful. I think that moved so many Academy members as well.”
While Kaling and Chopra Jonas – as well as fellow producer Guneet Monga (an Oscar winner for The Elephant Whisperers) – are bringing visibility to the Oscar-nominated project, they won’t win Oscars for the film if it were to win at the ceremony on March 2. That award would go to Graves and Mattai, who spent years on the short. Anuja has its roots in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic when there were global headlines about supply chain issues. Rather than focus on the consumer end, however, Graves and Mattai cast their gazes toward the production side. That’s when the idea for Anjua and its tone took shape.
“This movie is not a public service announcement, it’s not a documentary about the good work at the Salaam Baalak Trust. It’s a film that tries to be a work of art, right? It wants to express something true about the human spirit,” Graves said while speaking to Chopra Jonas. “On the one hand, we think this film will be a potent vehicle for change. And we’re developing a social impact campaign around it. But we made a film that was a tribute to the joy, resilience, energy, magic, and mischievousness of the kids we encountered while doing our site visit and research. I think our conception of the film was a little bit bleaker. As we worked more with these children, we felt like we really had to make a film that honored their spirit, and ultimately, they became the most important audience for us by the time we were filming. The whole time, I was thinking like, we want to make something that these kids themselves want to watch and that they would appreciate and enjoy, and so yeah, I hope that it moves audiences to think more deeply about the consumer choices that they make and that hopefully, you know, it maybe even raises some awareness and attention and resources for organizations that are helping to end child labor. But it’s not a problem that’s out there. It’s not a problem just in India. It’s a global problem.”
Watch the interviews above and check out Anuja on Netflix.
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