By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
In “Anuja,” a young girl must make a decision no child should have to make: whether to go to school or continue working in a factory with her big sister.
The short film, which recently received an Oscar nomination, leaves that decision up to the audience.
“Anuja” is a joint project of director Adam Graves and his wife, Suchitra Mattai. Others who helped with production include Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. The big film in a small package stars Sajda Pathan as Anuja and Ananya Shanbhag as her sister, Palak. It follows the life of two street children in New Delhi, India, who have been left to fend for themselves.
Anuja. (L to R) Sajda Pathan as Anuja, Ananya Shanbhag as Palak in Anuja. Credit Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
The sisters work every day under less-than-desirable conditions in a factory. Anuja is only 9 years old when she is handed an opportunity to sit for academic exams to enter boarding school. It’s a one-time offer. The pressure mounts, as, at the same time, Anuja’s factory boss discovers that her unusual mathematical intelligence would be useful to him when doing the books.
It all comes down to a single morning. Will Anuja go to the exam or go to work?
Try as you like to extract clues from the story, it’s all down to your choice, Graves and Mattai said in an interview with the Northwest Asian Weekly and other members of the press.
“That decision, which is really an undecidable one,” said Graves, “falls on the shoulders of the audience.”
Graves wants audience members to feel the “existential weight” that Anuja feels. Westerners might automatically think that getting an education is the superior choice, Mattai acknowledged in the same press interview. But that would take Anuja away from her sister, and “they might never connect again,” Mattai said.
The bond between Anuja and Palak is incredibly warm and strong. Graves explained that he intentionally created a “womb-like” space in the slum where the two sisters dwell.
In India, the womb is called the “garbhagriha,” and can be seen in religious architecture as the innermost part of a temple. Similarly, the sisters’ meager, yet welcoming home is their refuge, their temple. This is contrasted purposely, Graves continued, with the other locations in the film, such as a bustling outdoor marketplace, the uncomfortable factory, and a cold, upper-class indoor mall space.
“You’re moving from one universe to another, socio-economically,” Graves said.
“We’ve been so elated to see the response to this film, to realize that these young heroines can be accepted as universal heroines,” Mattai said.
Mattai and Graves were quick to point out to the press that in no way is “Anuja” meant to castigate India as a horrible place with slums and mistreated children. The circumstance of child labor and abandoned children living in poverty is not unique to any one place, they insisted. It’s all over the world, not just in India.
“Anuja” was made with the support of Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT), an organization in New Delhi that helps street and working children—and, the audience learns, where the film’s biggest reveal lies, as the credits roll.
Mattai and Graves are relatively new to the film industry and especially to Hollywood. Mattai is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work will be shown at the Seattle Art Museum in April. Graves is a scholar and philosopher specializing in South Asian Studies, religion, and philosophy.
The pair told the press that, at first, “Anuja” was “just a scrappy little family project” and then it picked up speed. Now, both of them are “more committed than ever” to “filming characters from different backgrounds.” They are interested, Mattai said, in stories that “transcend specificity” while bringing attention to the issues shown in “Anuja”—childhood poverty, child labor, broken families.
“Today’s storytelling, today’s entertainment needs to have a deeper meaning and a deeper message,” Mattai said.
In less than 30 minutes, “Anuja” shows us a whole world. We are quickly invested emotionally with Anuja and Palak, whose hardscrabble life has taught them from necessity that “everything requires a sacrifice” and yet it’s possible “to make something from nothing”—two concepts simultaneously present within the film’s dialogue.
Towards the end of the film, Palak pricks her finger. Is that a reference to a sacrifice between blood sisters? There is no right answer—but in the face of so much difficulty, between these two remarkable girls, and in life, hope remains.
“Anuja” is streaming on Netflix.
Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.