Issued: 11/Nov/2021, Republic. Online.
After Tamil film Koozhangal made the country proud by becoming India’s official entry to the
Oscars 2022, another Indian film Sonsi has made it to the Academy Award list. The film by
Savita Singh titled Sonsi (Shadow Bird), is bankrolled by Aarya fame actor Vikas Kumar. The
short film became an Oscar Qualifier after winning Best Film at the Bengaluru International
Short Film Festival, 2021. At the recently held 67th National Awards, Sonsi won the ‘Best
Cinematography’ (Non-Feature category) award.
Vikas shared his happiness with ANI and said that he feels grateful about being selected for
Oscar’s consideration. He said, “Not everyone can apply for Oscars. You can only submit your
short film if it has won at an Oscar Qualifying festival. Just last week we received confirmation
from The Academy that our film has been successfully entered for Oscar’s consideration. We’re
obviously thrilled!. At Khan and Kumar, we believe in telling stories where we see ‘the
extraordinary in the ordinary. Sonsi is our debut film. The response it has got is a huge
encouragement.”
Sonsi short film officially selected for Oscars 2022 race
Adding to it, he said, “We are currently working on two projects – a documentary on an annual
sporting event held in a village on the border of UP and Bihar, and a short film that is based
quite literally, out of this world. The 26-minute experimental film revolves around an
eight-year-old girl, Nadi (Aarohi Radhakrishnan), her dream-etched shadow-bird, and the
mysterious village time-keeper (Jameel Khan).”
Sonsi (Shadow Bird) has been produced by actor Vikas Kumar and his childhood friend,
tech-entrepreneur Sharib Khan under their banner, ‘Khan and Kumar Media Pvt Ltd’. National
Award-winning cinematographer, Savita Singh, made her debut as a director with this short film.
The title of the film comes from famed Hindi litterateur Vinod Kumar Shukla’s Deewar Mein Ek
Khidki Rehti Thi (A Window Lived in A Wall), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award for the best
Hindi work in 1999. Singh shot the film around Pune – stretches of forest land, where she used
to shoot back in the day while studying at FTII and knew the landscape well.