Hyderabad-based filmmaker Deepak Reddy’s Telugu short film Manasanamaha, which was unveiled digitally in March 2020, during the early stages of COVID-19 lockdown in India, had garnered lavish praise from members of Telugu film industry and by viewers on social media. Manasanamaha has now won the Best Romantic Short Platinum Award for April 2020 from Los Angeles-based ‘Independent Shorts Award’.

Manasanamaha, now streaming on Kala Mediaworks channel on YouTube, is a relationship drama where the protagonist recollects three of his previous relationships, mostly in reverse. The protagonist stands as a metaphor to the sun and the women in his life signify the different seasons — winter, spring and monsoon.

The 16-minutes long film starring Viraj Ashwin, Drishika Chander, Srivalli Raghavender and others, has been appreciated for its deft editing, music by Kamran and sound design.

Deepak intends to make this a full-length feature film in the near future.

Independent Shorts Award (ISA) is an IMDb qualifier monthly short film festival that has live screenings each month and an annual awards event in Hollywood.

According to the ISA website, all the entries are judged by experts from academia and film industry and the monthly winners automatically qualify to compete at the annual ISA event.

Further, all the award winning films of the monthly qualifying competitions from the ISA annual cycle (April 2020 to March 2021) will be screened at the 2021 ISA Hollywood Annual Awards to be held in August 2021 at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, CA.