Short film ‘Holy Curse’, has been recently qualified for the 2026 Academy Awards in the Best Live Action Short Film category. It has been making significant waves on the film festival circuit and is now considered an Oscar contender. Actor Anoop Soni talks about his film with Firstpost’s Lachmi Deb Roy for ‘Not Just Bollywood’.
Holy Curse is a new short from the U.S.-based Indian filmmaker Snigdha Kapoor. The short film, Holy Curse is about an 11-year-old, gender-nonconforming girl named Radha who visits India from America and faces her family’s attempts to cure her perceived ‘ancestral curse’ through oppressive, traditional rituals.
The film explores themes of cultural policing, gender identity, and the conflict between personal identity and familial expectations. The film stresses on how harmful certain rituals can get and how even educated people become victims of such traditions because of years of conditioning.
The film won a top prize at the Tasveer Film Festival, USA (which is an Oscar–qualifying festival), that win makes it eligible for submission for the short-film Oscars (for the Academy Awards’ short film categories) in the 2026 cycle.
Lilly Singh has come on board as an executive producer for the film, to boost the visibility of the film, Holy Curse globally, which often helps when a film is being positioned for an Oscar run. In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Firstpost, actor
Anoop Soni who plays the role of the uncle of Radha talks about the importance of this short film.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
How responsibly are we handling the
LGBTQ issue?
I would say there is definitely a change and this change is coming through more and more awareness. It is all about spreading awareness about LGBTQ and making people more sensitive about the issue. There is definitely a difference in the bigger cities.
How did the short film come to you?
It was the script that made me decide that I wanted to do the film, because it was very effective in the first read only. And when you read it for the second or the third time, you understand more layers of it. And the way my director narrated it, she was very sure what she wanted out of me from the film.
Being a father have you come across incidents among your kid’s friends where kids are struggling to come out of the closet?
I have not seen such cases in my close proximity. But the children around me, be it my nieces or nephews or my own kids, I talk to them. I discuss with them. And children today are very much aware, and there is more sensitivity towards the LGBTQ community in them because of the awareness.
How sending a message through short films is way tougher than a feature film?
In a short film you have a very limited time. It is difficult if you have to convey a message through a film like Holy Curse which is only 15 minutes long. But you also have time to focus on what you want to say. So, you have to make a film, which is engaging which is intriguing. And this film has managed to say what it wanted to. The credit for that goes to the director Snigdha Kapoor and cinematographer.
Your expectations from the film at the 19th Academy Award ceremony?
I am very positive and hopeful that we will win the academy award. The benefit of this award will be that the message will reach to more and more people. We will be able to talk about spreading the message about the LGBTQ community. I would also like to say that the performances in the film are brilliant. All the actors, especially Mrunal who has played the role of Radha. I have also tried my best as an actor. Yes, I am getting good reviews and people are praising my performance. People have also praised me for my choices of roles in the past few years.
Earlier it used to be like ‘He’s the Crime Patrol guy’, but that’s changing. I make sure that I choose roles that are different from what people see me in, be it
_Saare Jahan Se Achcha_ or Holy Curse now and some other work of mine. There is another series that is going to come on Netflix.
WATCH the trailer of the ‘Holy Curse’ here:
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