Actresses Sajda Pathan (left) and Ananya Shanbhag play sisters in Anuja. Photo courtesy of Netflix

Film & TV

 BU Prof Produced Oscar-Nominated Short Film Anuja

COM’s Aaron Kopp on his role in making the Hindi-language film about two young sisters striving for a better life

In the Oscar-nominated short film Anuja, now streaming on Netflix, two young orphaned sisters work jobs in a garment factory. When the younger sister gets a chance to take a placement exam to attend an elite boarding school, her older sister does everything in her power to support her.

One of the driving forces behind Anuja’s camera was Boston University’s Aaron Kopp, one of several producers on the Hindi-language film alongside Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, also one of the project’s executive producers. In his role, Kopp, a College of Communication associate professor of the practice of film and television, helped with a range of things, from early concept discussions to editing and postproduction notes.

The 97th Academy Awards ceremony is Sunday, March 2, and Kopp will watch the ceremony live from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It’s actually not his first time at the Oscars, as he attended the 84th Academy Awards ceremony in 2012 for Saving Face—winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject (he was a cinematographer on that project). 

Even if the film doesn’t come away with a golden statuette, Kopp says, Anuja’s Oscar nod and the other accolades it’s amassed, among them the grand prize at the New York Shorts International Film Festival, are exciting since they help the film reach a broader audience.

“In the early part of development, we talked about how, yes, we want to make a film, and yes, we want it to resonate with the average Netflix viewer,” Kopp says, “but we also want to think in a really disciplined way about how the film can then be a tool for communities to have conversations and to engage in the issues that are behind the film.” 

From early conversations to the awards circuit

Kopp grew up in the South African Kingdom of Eswatini, and throughout his career has been involved in cross-cultural filmmaking and partnering with underrepresented communities to craft thoughtful and artful narratives, all while encouraging diverse voices. In addition to Anuja and Saving Face, he was the cinematographer for the Oscar-nominated film The Hunting Ground, about sexual assault on college campuses, and he directed Liyana (winner of the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the LA Film Festival), about a Swazi girl who embarks on a perilous quest to save her young twin brothers. 

“I feel like [my film] work is just a natural outgrowth of understanding that we can use film to make an impact,” Kopp says. “And if we’re going to do that, which stories are the ones that most need to be told? It’s not an intentional strategic decision. It’s just sort of an instinctual thing that has evolved over the course of my career. And now, looking back, I see that it is definitely a pattern.”

Kopp says the idea for the 22-minute Anuja came about years ago during informal conversations he had with friends filmmaker Adam J. Graves and his wife, multidisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai. Kopp explains that he and Graves had had ongoing conversations about the importance of accurately representing children in difficult circumstances, as well as those in marginalized communities. They knew how crucial it was to portray not only the challenges these young people face, but also their dignity, beauty, joy, and fun. Graves set out to write a coming-of-age film. 

In her own research, Mattai happened upon an unsettling statistic: globally, nearly one in 10 children under the age of 15 is subject to child labor. She and Graves were disturbed by this news, since they had children of a similar age and Mattai’s family are descendants of indentured laborers from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. They also learned that in 2020, a total of 160 million children were in child labor—an increase for the first time in 20 years. Nearly 80 million children work hazardous jobs, and worldwide, 129 million girls are not in school. 

During and after the pandemic, headlines were filled with news about the global supply chain, Graves writes on the film’s website, but mostly “on the consumer-end of the story—on the scarcity of goods and the toll it was taking on the economic recovery. The lack of attention to the supply-side of the story seemed to underscore just how easy it is for affluent communities to ignore their place in a global economic system that often contributes to the exploitation of labor, including child labor.”

During his research for the film in South Asia, Graves was put in touch with NGOs that provide assistance to working children and their families. He visited and collaborated with the Salaam Baalak Trust, where he met with working (and formerly working) children and their families. The film’s lead actress, Sajda Pathan, is a resident of a Salaam Baalak Trust center that provides a home for girls formerly living on the streets of Delhi. 

Once Graves started fleshing out the film, Kopp says, his own producer role was simply a continuation of work that he had already been doing. He helped build the behind-the-scenes team, gave notes in editing and postproduction, and helped to bring in the film’s production company, Shine Global, which he’d previously worked with on Liyana. 

“Cinema is one of our most powerful ways to communicate, and it can affect the consciousness of the people who are experiencing our work,” he says. “I feel we need to wield that power carefully and [realize that] what we do as filmmakers has consequences. We have a sense of responsibility. Frankly, it’s an honor to work with folks whose stories have been omitted from the discourse.” 

What’s next for Kopp? He’s currently in postproduction on a documentary that focuses on missing and murdered Indigenous people and on a creative film project with the Lakota poet Sunny Red Bear. He also has several projects in development in addition to teaching at COM.

That work will be paused on Sunday as Kopp cheers on the Anuja team in person. “I’m just really honored and proud to be in the mix and to have had a small part in it,” he says. “I’m excited to see this film make an impact, because I think there’s a lot in this moment that we’re all living through. I believe that stories like this are especially urgent.”