Smile Pinki - Oscar for the best documentary short film

[vasanthakokilam]

In all the celebration of SDM, another award with much more significance did not get the visibility it deserves.

"Smile Pinki - A real World Fairytale" won the Oscar for the best documentary short film. It is a 39-minute documentary that traces
the six year old Pinki Sonkar's journey from being ostracized ( due to her lip deformity - cleft lip ) to being treated like a normal girl
after a social worker helped her undergo surgery. The girl is from the village of Dabai in the Ahura district of Uttar Pradesh.

http://www.smiletrain.org/

Guitar Prasanna set the background music for it and it is very much based on Indian classical and folk music.

You can watch the trailer and the oscar acceptance speech at the above site.

[cmlover]

But the Oscar went to a Brazilian, though the documentary was made entirely in India using Indian talents and even Indian Musician (Prasanna which is news to me!).

[saramati]

May be our directorial attributes are not reccognised. Also so far, the oscars that the Indians have won, banu athaiya for "Gandhi' as well as
rahman, resul pookutty and the "smile pinky", foreign directors have dealt with Indian subjects. Any thoughts on that, pl

[vasanthakokilam]

saramati: Except for the category 'foreign language film', rest of the categories can only include Hollywood movies. ( there is some precise definition as to what a Hollywood movie is ). It is quite rare for an Indian director to direct a Hollywood movie, let alone an oscar winning one, though that may be changing with the recent spate of collaborations between Hollywood and Bollywood studios. Indian American directors ( like M. Night Shyamalan ) have directed Hollywood movies, no doubt.

Smile Pinki is all Indian content along with some good CM/HM based background score. Most of the dialog is in Hindi with English subtitles.