Smile Pinky – the Indian based short documentary that has won Oscar Award
“Smile Pinky” a short documentary about a poor girl living in a remote village of India with a cleft upper lip, and how gets back to normal life has won the Oscar Award.
The heart-rending narration of the documentary “Smile Pinky” is deftly handled by the American Producer/Director Megan Mylan. The documentary is shot mostly in the background of the Holy City of India – Varnasi. Pinki, a small Indian girl of 6 years is born with a cleft in her upper lip and lives with her poor parents. She is not going to school, as other children and play-mates tease her on her deformity. Thus the heart-break of a young child, who is being outcast by the society for no fault of hers, is shown to move the audience. A small surgery would make things right for such of those children. But the poor living conditions of her parents, clubbed with illiteracy, makes things worse as they are desperate that such an operation is a distant dream and not affordable by them.
Pankaj, is a social worker moving from village to village and spreading the news of a hospital in Varnasi, where people are treated free of cost, particularly for deformities like clefts. He was pasting bills and distributing hand-outs among the village people, when someone says there is a girl named Pinki living nearby. Pankaj meets the parents and explains things. With hesitation, the father brings Pinki to this hospital where hundreds of children with clefts have also come for the medical camp. How Pinki is treated by an operation free of cost and gets back into normal life like the other children is rest of the documentary.
Out of four nominations in the short documentary segment, Smile Pinki, running 39 minutes totally, has won the Oscar. Residents of Dabai village of Ahura District in Uttar Pradesh wherefrom Pinki hails, were praying for the winning of the film at Oscar. Plastic Surgeon Dr. Subhod Kumar Singh, who treated Pinki back to normalcy free of cost is hoping that the films Academy Award nomination will create much needed awareness of such children in poverty living in rural India.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
There is a little girl in the movie that I can’t seem to get out of my mind. At the time she was about six years, the doctor look at her hand and asked the father why her hands are like that and he answer and that her mother died and that she have to help take care of the rest of the children, cook and clean at six years old. I need some kind of contact for this child.
i was very happy to see this movie