Pune-Made Marathi Short Film ‘A Story Carved On A Tree’ Wins BISFF 2026, Earns Oscar Qualification

Pune, 29th August 2026: A Marathi short film made by a Pune-based team has now made its way from the outskirts of the city to an Oscar-qualifying film festival.

Sainath Ganuwad’s A Story Carved On A Tree, a 21-minute Marathi drama, has won the Indian Competition at the 16th Bengaluru International Short Film Festival (BISFF) 2026. The win also means the film is officially qualified for the Academy Awards selection process.

The film was one of the entries selected for the Indian Competition at BISFF, where the Indian Competition is among the sections recognised for Oscar qualification. The 2026 edition saw thousands of entries, with the Indian Competition receiving over 750 submissions.

At the centre of Ganuwad’s film is a question that sounds simple, but carries the weight of an entire village: “Humare gaon tak bus kyun nahin aati hai?”

The question comes from Nisha, a seventh-grade girl living in Khed Shivapur, a remote village where buses do not reach. Every day, Nisha has to walk miles just to catch transport to school, often arriving late and being punished despite having no control over the situation.

For Nisha, getting to school is not simply about waking up on time or studying hard. It is about whether there is a bus available in the first place.

Tired of the situation, she confronts the village Sarpanch and demands to know why her village has been left without proper transportation. From there, the film moves beyond the question of a bus route, exploring themes of power, fear, caste oppression and the memories that communities carry across generations.

That idea of stories and trauma being passed from one generation to another was what stayed with Ganuwad long before the film was made.

“Concept came through during a fellowship, while working themes, generational trauma and generational passing of stories and lessons, stuck with me, so much so that even a year later I had in mind, and ended up formulating a script about it, which was then produced to be this film,” says Sainath.

The film itself grew out of his memories of growing up in rural Maharashtra, where stories of resistance and injustice were often passed down within families and communities rather than recorded in textbooks.

In A Story Carved On A Tree, those ideas come together through Nisha’s experiences and the story of the generations that came before her, as she begins to understand where her own courage comes from.

The film was shot around Pune’s outskirts, with a crew of around 20 to 30 people, all from Pune. And unlike a production where everyone sticks strictly to their department, this was a team of friends who had already known each other before coming together for the film.

“The thing was that we’re all friends from before and we came together for the film, so it was very permeable, no one person stuck rigidly to just performing a single role,” Ganuwad says.

“Sometimes the set designer would be out sourcing for costumes, the AD would be taking up production roles, and etcetera.”

Even the location they finally shot at came together at the last minute.

“The location that we had originally finalised had issues with permissions, so one of the team members had another location in mind, so we went and saw the location, we liked it, then called the DOP to do a recce, once he confirmed that it was adequate, shot there the next day.”

The film was produced by Mayur Deshmukh under Social Manch, with Chirayush Bhanushali as cinematographer, Ajinkya Kulkarni as editor, Sharayu Tayade handling production design and costume, Atharva Sandbhor as art director, D. Shivam and Swaroop Solanke on sound design, Ashutosh Sohni on the background score and Abhijeet Abde as DI and colourist.

For Ganuwad, the journey to filmmaking itself has also been a shift in direction. He studied engineering at MIT-WPU in Kothrud before moving towards filmmaking and graduating from FTII, Pune, in screenplay writing in 2017-18. He is a filmmaker, screenwriter and theatre practitioner whose work spans cinema, theatre, advertising and documentary filmmaking.

Today, he is working with ZEE5’s Marathi writers’ room, developing shows for the platform’s Marathi section.

But while the film has now entered the Academy’s selection pathway, winning was never really the plan.

“We didn’t expect to win, it was never a goal to win or to be nominated. Once the film was screened and we found out we had won, it still took a while to sink and process it,” says Ganuwad.

The win at BISFF adds to an already growing festival run for A Story Carved On A Tree. The film has also been officially selected at Waves Goa 2026, where it won the Best Child Actor award, while the Pune International Cultural Film Festival recognised it with Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Director awards. It has also been selected at festivals including the Annabhau Sathe International Film Festival, Abhijaat Film Festival, Nagpur Film Festival and DY Fest ICONOCLAST.

The Oscar qualification, however, marks a different kind of milestone.

Being an Oscar-qualifying festival winner does not mean the film has been nominated for an Academy Award. Instead, it makes the film eligible to enter the Academy’s selection process, where it can be considered alongside other qualifying films.

For a film that began with a fellowship idea, was shot around Pune by a small team of friends, and grew around the question of why a village does not have a bus, the journey has now reached considerably further than its creators expected.

And perhaps the most fitting part is where Nisha’s story ends.

After fighting to be heard and refusing to accept blame for something beyond her control, she finally writes the inspirational quote she has been denied the chance to write at school.

“Education is like a tigress’s milk; he who drinks it will roar,” reads the quote attributed to Dr B.R. Ambedkar.

For Nisha, it is a new beginning. For Ganuwad and his Pune-based team, it could be the beginning of an entirely new chapter too.