Snigdha Kapoor’s HOLY CURSE is a cinematic cry, furious, fragile, and luminous. It’s the kind of short film that grips you by the throat from its first frame and doesn’t let go until long after the credits fade. Here is a filmmaker unafraid to confront the invisible violence of conformity, and in doing so, she delivers a work of staggering moral and emotional clarity.

Radha, played with breathtaking vulnerability by newcomer Mrunal Kashid, becomes the vessel for an entire generation’s quiet revolt. As their relatives perform rituals meant to “cleanse” them of a so-called curse, we witness how superstition and love can entangle into something terrifyingly sincere. Kapoor’s genius lies in her refusal to sensationalise this pain. Instead, she renders it with haunting stillness, allowing the audience to sit in Radha’s confusion, shame, and eventual defiance.

The supporting cast; Adithi Kalkunthe, Anup Soni, Prayrak Mehta, and Shardul Bhardwaj weave a tapestry of tenderness and denial that feels painfully real. There are no easy antagonists here, only people crushed beneath the same systems they unknowingly perpetuate.

Visually, HOLY CURSE is pure cinematic poetry. Juhi Sharma’s cinematography finds grace in every frame, the saturated reds of ritual cloth, the pale blues of early dawn. While Alex Symcox’s score hums with restrained anguish, never intruding but always present, like a heartbeat beneath the surface. The result is a sensory experience that blurs the boundaries between realism and reverie.

In a film landscape often content with token gestures toward inclusion, HOLY CURSE is fearless in its specificity. It does not translate its pain for Western comfort, nor does it flatten its spirituality for the sake of irony. Instead, Kapoor allows contradiction; faith and fear, love and control to coexist, trusting the viewer to hold that complexity.

By the time the film reaches its final moments; a quiet, defiant gesture of self-recognition, one feels both devastated and reborn. HOLY CURSE is not just Oscar-qualified; it’s soul-qualified. It reminds us why we need cinema in the first place: to look at the things we were taught to hide, and finally, to see them as holy.

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Dana Scott