While the world sat up and cheered Slumdog Millionaire, a little film made its way into the heart of Oscars and won in the documentary-short category. Till it won, few knew about Smile Pinki, but now it’s won, we find yet another reason to smile. Directed by Megan Mylan, field producer of the film Nandini Rajwade talks about this unexpected, but a well-deserved victory.

“What to say, I’m a big believer in luck,” Nandini speaks quickly, enjoying this glorious moment. In short, the film tracks the lives of two protagonists suffering from cleft lip and palate, a genetic problem that seems to develop during the last few months of pregnancy and is particularly prevalent amongst people from the poorer segments of society. “It’s about living with it and facing social ostracism, and mothers are accused for giving birth to deformed children, and the director decided to follow them through this journey of how they find a cure and a happy ending,” tells Nandini, who has worked extensively on social, environment, development and human interest issues on shows like ‘Living on the Edge’ and ‘The Great Escape’. She was also the only Indian environment journalist to be invited to Japan for an international environment conference in 1998. As for this film it came to her through the alumni of University of California, Berkeley, where she did her Masters in Journalism. “Megan was a part of it and it was Smile Train a US-based NGO that works on this cause approached Megan to do this it.” Smile Train sponsors operations for cleft palate across the world and Dr Subodh Kumar Singh, Director and Chief of Plastic Surgery at G.S. Memorial Plastic Surgery Hospital & Trauma Centre in Banaras has been selflessly working on this cause doing as many as several hundred of these operations free-of-cost every month. ‘’From finding the characters for the movie, fleshing out the story, translating the thought into something concrete, convincing the families that their dream of seeing their children smile can come true and making them trust us was the most challenging part, and I spent more than a year on the field to make this all possible. It’s a story of real people and real issues and I am committed to doing stories on human interest, environmental and real issues,’’ says Nandini.