This 16-minute short about a nonbinary preteen left Lilly Singh impressed

Filmmaker and cinematographer Snigdha Kapoor didn’t have to look far from her lived experience while storyboarding her short film Holy Curse. After years of living and working in the US, Kapoor realised how few films reflected the emotional reality of growing up South Asian, whether in India or abroad. The emotional core of Holy Curse (currently streaming on The New Yorker’s official YouTube channel) comes from questions Kapoor carried since adolescence. She remembers a time when, like her film’s protagonist Radha, “my body was changing, and there were a lot of labels that were being thrown at me, and I didn’t really identify with them”.

In the 16-minute film, 11-year-old Radha, an Indian kid growing up in the US, returns to India with their parents just as puberty and questions around gender identity begin to collide. Radha encounters resistance from relatives who attempt traditional ceremonies, convinced they are breaking a generational curse. A simple family visit becomes a pressure cooker, exposing how cultural anxiety can close in on a child’s emerging sense of self. Radha’s first period becomes the turning point of the film. “For someone who doesn’t align with the gender binary, to go through a biological process such as menarche is such a defining point,” says Kapoor.

A strong festival run has made Holy Curse, starring Mrunal Kashid as Radha, Anup Soni as her uncle, and Shardul Bharadwaj and Adithi Kalkunte as Radha’s parents, eligible for Oscar consideration. The film’s producing team includes global entertainer, producer, and gender equality advocate Lilly Singh, who spoke about her involvement with Kapoor’s film. “I get sent a lot of things all the time. The first thing that intrigued me [about Holy Curse] was the title, mostly because I was like, I didn’t know what it’s about. And then when I watched it, I went through a series of emotions. I thought this is really beautiful. It’s shot and directed very well and the performances are so good, especially Radha’s performance.”

After watching, Singh knew she had to meet the filmmaker and discuss the film. And after meeting Kapoor, she knew she wanted in: “I was just so impressed that in 15 minutes I went through so many emotions. We need more things that start a conversation,” says Singh.

Singh’s involvement aligns with the work she’s been doing through Unicorn Island Fund and her India-recorded podcast, Shame Less. The LA-based comedian was in India recently to record her new episodes, which she describes as “sitting down with influential Indian people, South Asians, to talk about vulnerable, deep themes. Not to talk about solely their latest movie or box office numbers”. In the past she has had Uorfi Javed, Karan Johar, Ali Fazal, Ananya Pandey, and Neena Gupta as guests, and this season we will see Tiger Shroff, Kajol, Abhishek Bachchan, and Nora Fatehi discuss identity and insecurity and normalise conversations around topics like gender and mental health because, as Singh notes, “what these people say really matters” to families across India.

Singh adds, “When you think of someone like Tiger Shroff, you think of someone who’s a hero who’s strong, who’s like the leading man, and I ask him to tell me about times he was insecure, about where he got the idea of what it means to be a man, about the last time he cried. The show talks about gender and breaks down this idea of what it means to be a man and a woman and how we put ourselves into boxes.” 

Holy Curse too questions this “tendency of human beings to just attach labels to ourselves and then restrict ourselves just to fit those labels”, according to Kapoor. The story grew from that friction—between identity as lived, identity as perceived, and the pressure to conform.

Both Singh and Kapoor acknowledge that something real is happening among South Asian women creators supporting each other, with allies such as Priyanka Chopra, Mindy Kaling and Poorna Jagannathan.

“From where I’m sitting, I believe wholeheartedly that this is real. Fifteen years ago, I would have had a different answer. Over the past 15 years, we collectively have done a really good job at recognising the system that holds us back. Today I would say the sisterhood is strong,” says Singh.

Kapoor adds that her film’s journey reflects that shift: “We’re all just tired and fired up. We want to tell the kind of stories that we have not seen before, which are more of an authentic representation of our experiences. And we are doing that collectively.”

Holy Curse is both a personal story and a broader statement about identity, culture, and the limits placed on young people trying to grow within them. Its success and the support it has drawn signal a moment in which South Asian women are not just making space for their narratives but insisting they be told with clarity and without compromise.