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Smile Pinki

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Can and able, smile pinki, which won the best documentary short subject, features pinki, a five-year-old from a village in uttar pradesh, who is one of the beneficiaries of the free cleft palate surgeries performed by the ngo smile train..

Listen to Story

But the real star of the film is Ghutaru , whose wordless agony at being laughed at by his friends, can bring tears to the most hardened heart.

Impoverished parents hoping to give their children the best in life, doctors not losing their humanity despite doing hundreds of such surgeries, children teetering on the edge of promise and fear.

The movie captures it all, not without humour. My Oscar goes to Pinki and Ghutaru.

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Smile pinki.

Directed by Megan Mylan

Pinki is a five-year-old girl from a village in the Mirzapur District, India, born into a desperately poor family, and with a cleft lip. Pinki never realized that this condition required just one simple operation until she met Pankaj, a social worker traveling from village to village gathering patients to go to hospital in Varanasi that provides free surgery to thousands each year. This real-world fairy tale follows its protagonist journey to a dream smile from isolation and shame.

Director Director

Megan Mylan

Producer Producer

Cinematography cinematography.

Jon Shenk Nick Doob

Composer Composer

HBO Documentary Films

Alternative Title

Documentary

Releases by Date

31 dec 2008, releases by country.

• Theatrical PG

39 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Eliza ★★

OH MY GOD THIS IS LITERALLY JUST "A STORY OF HEALING" AGAIN WHAT THE FUCK STOP

Review by Rosie Lighters ★★★★

This generation of cinephiles has forgotten the value of a folder: it contains the same message, but it goes way faster.

Review by Christof ★★

Another Oscar winning documentary about suffering children, although the fact that the children this one is about aren't suffering from a terminal disease, but a cleft lip makes this feel weirdly low-stakes. Which kind of goes to show how, deep down, this genre of exploitative pat-myself-on-the-back documentary is not exactly a high art form, but merely goes for appealing to instincts more than anything else.

Case in point: Were all those closeups of children with cleft lips really necessary to make this point? Well, apparently they were.

Part of my effort to watch at least one short film per day. Here is the list I am currently working through, with a random number generator determining the film each day. I will take recommendations for everything that's 40 minutes max.

Review by Arnel Vargas ★★★★

*Academy award winner start time 5:30pm

Review by Rafe Navarro ★★★★★

Really inspiring documentary about children who have cleft lips.

I hope they’re all doing well in life.

Select your preferred poster

• What are Clefts?
• Latin America
• Philippines

Smile Pinki 10 Years Later

A decade after her Oscar® win, Pinki's story continues to shine the spotlight on the importance of cleft care in India.

Ten years after her Smile Train sponsored cleft surgery, Pinki is smiling brighter than ever.

When Smile Pinki won the Academy Award® for Best Short Subject Documentary in 2008, it brought much needed attention to the millions of children unable to afford cleft surgery in the developing world and the solution Smile Train offers. As Smile Train partner and Pinki’s surgeon Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh put it, “The patients started pouring in.”

10 years after the film’s historic Oscar® win,  Dr. Singh, Director Megan Mylan, and Smile Train’s Vice President and Regional Director South Asia Mamta Carroll look back on the film and the effect it still has on people today. Watch to the film’s end for an update from Smile Pinki star Pinki Sonkar herself. 

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Smile pinki wins an oscar for best documentary, will smile pinki win an oscar for megan mylan.

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When the horror histories of the 2010s are written, the decade will be associated with trauma metaphors the way the ‘80s are with slasher movies. And although it comes on the cusp of a new decade, the new Paramount wide-release horror movie "Smile" fits right in with its PTSD-induced kin. The difference here is that the monster is barely a metaphor at all: The demon, or evil spirit, or whatever it is—the movie is vague on this point—literally feeds on, and is spread by, trauma.

Specifically, the vague something that dogs Dr. Rose Cotter ( Sosie Bacon ) throughout “Smile” likes the taste of people who have witnessed someone else dying by suicide—gruesome, painful, bloody suicide, by garden shears and oncoming trains and the shattered fragments of a ceramic vase in a hospital intake room. That’s where Rose briefly meets Laura ( Caitlin Stasey ), a PhD student who’s brought to the psychiatric emergency ward where Rose works, shaking and terrified that something is out to get her. “It looks like people, but it’s not a person,” Laura explains, saying that this thing has been following her ever since she witnessed one of her professors bludgeoning himself to death with a hammer four days earlier. At the end of the extended dialogue scene that opens the film, Laura turns to Rose with a psychotic grin on her face and proceeds to slit her own throat.

This would unsettle anyone, but it especially bothers Rose given that Rose’s own mother died by suicide many years earlier. That lingering trauma, and the fears and stigma that surround it, form the film’s most intelligent thematic thread: Rose’s fiance Trevor ( Jessie T. Usher ) admits that he’s researched inherited mental illness online, and harsh terms like “nutjobs,” “crazies,” and “head cases” are used to describe mentally ill people throughout the film. The idea that she might not actually be plagued by the same entity that killed Laura, and that her hallucinations, lost time, and emotional volatility might have an internal cause, seems to bother Rose more than the concept of being cursed. The people around Rose, including Trevor, her therapist Dr. Northcott ( Robin Weigert ), her boss Dr. Desai ( Kal Penn ), and her sister Holly (Gillian Zinzer), certainly seem to think the problem is more neurochemical than supernatural—that is, until it’s way too late. 

The only one who believes Rose is her ex, Joel ( Kyle Gallner ), a cop who’s been assigned to Laura’s case. Their tentative reunion opens the door to the film’s mystery element, which makes up much of “Smile’s” long, but not overly long, 115-minute run time. The film’s storyline follows many of your typical beats of a supernatural horror-mystery, escalating from a quick Google (the internet-age equivalent of a good old-fashioned library scene) to an in-person interview with a traumatized, incarcerated survivor of whatever this malevolent entity actually is. Brief reference is made to a cluster of similar events in Brazil, opening up the door to a sequel.

“Smile’s” greatest asset is its relentless, oppressive grimness: This is a film where children and pets are as vulnerable as adults, and the horror elements are bloody and disturbing to match the dark themes. This unsparing sensibility is enhanced by Bacon’s shaky, vulnerable performance as Rose: At one point, she screams at Trevor, “I am not crazy!,” then mumbles an apology and looks down at her shoes in shame. At another, her wan smile at her nephew’s birthday party stands as both a bleak counterpoint to the sick grin the entity’s victims see before they die (thus the film’s title), as well as a relatable moment for viewers who have reluctantly muddled their way through similar gatherings in the midst of a depressive episode. 

Sadly, despite a compelling lead and strong craft behind the camera—the color palette, in shades of lavender, pink, teal, and gray, is capably chosen and very of the moment—“Smile” is diminished by the sheer fact that it’s not as fresh a concept as it might seem. This is director Parker Finn ’s debut feature as a writer and director, based on a short film that won a jury award at SXSW 2020. To spin that into a non-franchise wide-release movie from a major studio like Paramount within two years—in a pandemic, no less!—is an impressive achievement, to be sure. 

But in padding out the concept from an 11-minute short into a nearly two-hour movie, “Smile” leans too heavily not only on formulaic mystery plotting, but also on horror themes and imagery lifted from popular hits like “ The Ring ” and “ It Follows .” David Robert Mitchell ’s 2014 film is an especially prominent, let’s say, influence on “Smile,” which, combined with its placement on the “it’s really about trauma” continuum, make this a less bracing movie experience than it might have been had it broken the mold more aggressively. It does introduce Finn as a capable horror helmer, one with a talent for an elegantly crafted jump scare and a knack for making a viewer feel uneasy and upset as they exit the theater—both advantages for a film like this one. But fans excited to see an “original” horror film hitting theaters should temper those expectations. 

This review was filed from the premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 23rd. It opens on September 30th.

Katie Rife is a freelance writer and critic based in Chicago with a speciality in genre cinema. She worked as the News Editor of  The A.V. Club  from 2014-2019, and as Senior Editor of that site from 2019-2022. She currently writes about film for outlets like  Vulture, Rolling Stone, Indiewire, Polygon , and  RogerEbert.com.

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Film credits.

Smile (2023)

Rated R for strong violent content and grisly images, and language.

115 minutes

Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter

Kyle Gallner as Joel

Caitlin Stasey as Laura Weaver

Jessie T. Usher as Trevor

Rob Morgan as Robert Talley

Kal Penn as Dr. Morgan Desai

Robin Weigert as Dr. Madeline Northcott

• Parker Finn

Cinematographer

• Charlie Sarroff
• Elliot Greenberg
• Cristobal Tapia de Veer

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13 Film: Smile Pinki

Smile Pinki

Smile Pinki  (2008) is a 40-minute documentary directed by Megan Mylan which tells the story of a poor girl in rural India whose life is transformed when she receives free surgery to correct her cleft lip. The documentary won the 81st Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

Watch  Smile Pinki (4:20)

Consider this:

• Some viewers have said that this film is “one person’s story, but in some ways, it [is] everybody’s story.” Why do you think that is the case?
• How is this story instructive in the context of accepting physical deformity or fighting to overcome it?
• In  Smile Pinki,  Pankaj is a social worker traveling from village to village gathering patients to go to a hospital in Varanasi that provides free surgery to thousands each year. Why is Pankaj equal to the greatest doctors, nurses, and caregivers worldwide and what does that reveal about the key ingredient needed to make a difference in the healthcare arena?
• Why is shame often fostered upon people with physical deformities, causing them to self-isolate?
• In the United States, what physical “differentness” in people is often met with ridicule (whether subtle or overt)?
• What do you see as being perhaps the only legitimate reason for seeking to correct one’s physical abnormality?
• Would you have acted any differently if you were Pinki’s parents as it pertained to seeking surgical help to “heal” her cleft lip?

Humanities 101 Copyright © by Ryna May. All Rights Reserved.

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Smile Pinki (2008)

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