Srikanth Srinivasan reviews Rajnesh Domalpalli’s Vanaja:

It will be a crime if I don’t mention the stellar performance of Mamatha Bhukya who can teach any so-called-veteran mainstream actresses a thing or two. Independent films usually suffer from bad non-professional performances but it his essentially Bhukya’s work that takes the film out of that pitfall and elevates it into extraordinary levels. Now, here is a killer of a trivia – Vanaja was made as the final project to a master’s degree in film studies at the Columbia University! And perhaps this is the reason, Vanaja could not make it into the Oscar race (not that the selection panel passes only great films!). If this is the kind of cinema that we get from a student, I am thrilled to imagine what we can expect of him when he is an established filmmaker. Perhaps Domalpalli is the Indian reply to Florian Donnersmarck.