Hyd student's film to be screened at India World Festival

Nidheya Suresh, a native of Kerala and currently a Los Angeles- based screenwriter, director and producer is all set to screen her first solo directed film 'Maa' publicly at the India World Film Festival in Hyderabad on March 8.

Nidheya who spent her primary years of schooling in Nasr School in Hyderabad has become one of the youngest successful directors and producers of short films. Currently, Nidheya is a US-based movie professional who is a graduate in MFA for screenwriting from New York Film Academy. She has written and directed five short films.

She wanted to become a novelist around the time she finished her course in BA Journalism in India and was planning for a future. She then developed a deep love for the film industry. This time, a friend of hers suggested her to try screenwriting, and then she packed her bags and flew to America to pursue this.

Her first short film 'Idee Fixe', which was written and directed by Ahlan Williams, was released in 2018. This story was about a young girl obsessed with the murder of her best friend who begins exploring to find out what happened. The film was nominated for 'Best First Time Director' at the Oniros Film Awards and 'Best Original Idea' at the Top Indie Film Awards. The leading actress in the film, Maria Sa, won the Best Actress at the Top Indie Film Awards.

Later, she wrote and co-directed the film 'Tabitha' (co-director was Ahlan Williams), a horror film about the extent of parental grief. The film was an official selection at multiple national and international film festivals. Oniros Film Awards awarded Tabitha as their 'Best Horror Film', while it won an 'Honorable Mention for the Short Film' category at the Upstate NY Horror Film Festival in 2019.

Recently, Tabitha has been accepted to the Top Short Film Festival and was called one of the Top 15 screenplays, and Top 50 films of the festival cycle. It is still in contention for "Best Screenplay", and "Best Horror Film," "Best Original Story," "Best Horror Film" at FimCon Awards and "Honorable Mention: Horror Film" at Top Shorts Film Festival.

At the beginning of January 2019, Nidheya finished her first solo directorial film, Maa, about a young gay Indian woman reuniting with her estranged mother (who doesn't know of her sexuality) after many years.

This film performed very well at festivals, winning Nidheya and the film many accolades such as: "Best Indie Filmmaker" at the prestigious International Film Festival, "Honorable Jury Mention" (and public screening) at the 7th Indian Cine Film Festival in Mumbai, "Honorable Mention: Indie Film" at the Los Angeles Film Awards, "Best LGBTQ Film" and "Honorable Mention: Screenplay" at the Oniros Film Awards.

After years of working on short films, Nidheya is expanding to creating a full-fledged web series with a friend of hers and has a feature film and another web series in development too.