Oscars 2025: Indian Short film ‘Anuja’ earns nomination for Best Live Action Short 

Besides 'Anuja', 'I Am Ready, Warden' is another movie with an India connect. Nominated in the Documentary Short Film category, the film is directed by Indian-origin American filmmaker Smriti Mundhra

New Delhi: ‘Anuja’, a New Delhi-set short film, on Thursday bagged a nomination in the Live Action Short category at the 97th Academy Awards.

‘Anuja’, directed by Adam J Graves and Suchitra Mattai, is pitted against ‘A Lien’, ‘I’m Not a Robot’, ‘The Last Ranger’ and ‘The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent’ at the awards gala.

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The nominations for the 2025 Oscars, which were twice postponed earlier this month due to wildfires in Los Angeles, were announced by Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott.

‘Anuja’ follows a gifted nine-year-old Anuja, who must make a choice between education and factory work alongside her sister — a decision that will shape both their futures. It stars Sajda Pathan and Ananya Shanbhag. The film has two-time Oscar-winning producer Guneet Monga on board as executive producer and Hollywood star-writer Mindy Kaling as producer.

It is produced in collaboration with the Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT), a non-profit founded by filmmaker Mira Nair’s family in support of street and working children, alongside Shine Global, and Krushan Naik Films.

Recently, actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas boarded the project as an executive producer. Besides ‘Anuja’, ‘I Am Ready, Warden’ is another movie with an India connect.

Nominated in the Documentary Short Film category, the film is directed by Indian-origin American filmmaker Smriti Mundhra. ‘I Am Ready, Warden’ is about Texas death row prisoner John Henry Ramirez who seeks redemption from his victim’s son in the days leading up to his execution in 2022.

The film is produced by Mundhra, Maya Gnyp, Keri Blakinger and Nina Anand Aujla. Other nominees in the Documentary Short Film category are ‘Death by Numbers’, ‘Incident’, ‘Instruments of a Beating Heart’ and ‘The Only Girl in the Orchestra’.

Mundhra was earlier nominated in the same category for her film ‘St. Louis Superman’ at the 2019 Oscars. Many in India were looking out for Payal Kapadia’s critically-acclaimed film ‘All We Imagine As Light’ to bag a nomination at the Oscars but that didn’t happen.

The film, which was overlooked as India’s official entry in the Best International Feature category of the Oscars, charted history by becoming the first Indian title to win the Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024.

‘All We Imagine As Light’ is nominated for the Best Film Not in English Language at the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards. The 2025 Academy Awards will be held on March 2 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.