Anooya Swamy
2024 HEAR US Awardee
Graduate Film Class of 2027
Anooya Swamy is an Indian filmmaker and entrepreneur born and raised in Bangalore, India, currently pursuing her MFA at Tisch School of Arts in Film/TV Production. After a successful stint at Ogilvy, she launched PANDU, a media company based in India, through which her work spans narrative films, documentaries, commercials and marketing visuals. Her films and collaborations find inspiration in the everyday absurdities of life. She explores how Dalits, people of colour, and women adapt, play and celebrate. She is currently producing a feature-length film in India.
Project
Fawn / Jinkemari: How can you report a missing person for an undocumented worker? What are the moralities of a man who does an honest man’s work in an illegal setting? What do we expect of men? How do we treat our women?
'Fawn' explores the elusive nature of truth and memory through the lens of the main character's feelings of alienation, subjective reality, and her search for comfort in the pursuit of finding her husband.
The number of undocumented workers going "missing" is officially few, but the stories of wives and children of such workers tell another story. This is my attempt to amplify a story as such in this doc-narrative film.
The film was shot in real locations, with a local crew in India and 95% of non-actors from the communities we want to represent.
