Updated On: 24 Aug 2026
Bengaluru-born filmmaker Anooya Swamy’s short film Pankaja has won the Best Student Film award at the 2026 HollyShorts Film Festival in Los Angeles, adding another recognition to its growing international festival journey.
The award was announced at the HollyShorts Awards ceremony on August 23. Pankaja was among the films competing in the Best Student Film category and went on to win the award.
The HollyShorts recognition comes after a notable run for the short film. Pankaja had its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it was selected for the U.S. Fiction Shorts programme. Sundance describes the film as the story of Pankaja and her daughter Lalli, who search the slums of Bengaluru for Pankaja’s missing husband.
The film subsequently continued its festival journey in the UK and the US. At the Raindance Film Festival in London, Pankaja received the Best Live Action Short award.
It then won the Best Student U.S. Short award at the Palm Springs International ShortFest 2026.
Written and directed by Anooya, Pankaja is a Telugu-Kannada bilingual short set in Bengaluru. The film follows a mother and her young daughter as they navigate the city in search of the woman’s missing husband. Sundance lists the film as a USA/India production, with Anooya serving as director, screenwriter and producer.
Anooya was born and raised in Bengaluru and is a graduate of the MFA Film & Television Production programme at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She was also part of the Sundance Ignite x Adobe programme and participated in Sundance 2026 programming for emerging filmmakers.
The sequence of Sundance selection, Raindance recognition, Palm Springs award and now the HollyShorts Best Student Film award marks a strong festival run for Pankaja and its young filmmaker.
HollyShorts, held annually in Los Angeles, is an established international short-film festival with several Academy Award-qualifying categories. The Best Student Film award is a separate category and is not itself an Oscar-qualifying award.
For Swamy, the HollyShorts win adds another international honour to a film rooted in Bengaluru and made during her graduate film studies at NYU.
Pankaja continues to bring a distinctly Bengaluru story to audiences and juries across international film festivals, marking an encouraging early chapter in Anooya Swamy’s filmmaking career.
