Bittu, a Karishma Dev Dube film,  that has been shortlisted for the 2021 Academy Awards in the “Live Action Short Film” category, didn’t make it to the nomination list.

The film celebrates the friendship of two little girls. Bittu was screened at Palm Springs Shortfest, Dharamshala International Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival.

Karishma also won the Best Director Award for the film at the Hollyshorts Film Festival. 

In the Live Action Short Film category, Bittu made it to the list of 10 finalists after having competed with 174 other films. The piece, presented by Ekta Kapoor, Guneet Monga, and writer-director Tahira Kashyap Khurrana under the banner Indian Women Rising (IWR), is aimed at encouraging and unearthing Indian female talent. IWR was launched by the producers in January 2021.

A true story about friendship, Bittu is set up in rural India and circles around the story of two little girls. According to reports, Bittu derives its inspiration from a poisoning accident that took place in a school in 2013. Karishma said she took inspiration from the incident.

The film centers on a child’s psychology rather than the incident. Karishma said: “Inspired by an infamous school poisoning that took place in India in 2013. This film is less about why and how the poisoning happened; instead, it explores a child’s experience suddenly and senselessly thrown into such peril…It was here when I formed my complicated relationship with authority, much like the one Bittu has with her teachers in school,” India Today quoted her as saying.

Karishma has previously won the prestigious Director’s Guild of America (DGA) Student Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in the Asian American Category for Bittu, which was shot in a span of six days.

Earlier, producer Guneet Monga’s 2018 film, Period. End of Sentence, had won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2019.