“Working on this project was like revisiting my childhood; the familiar sounds and rhythms of daily life from my village house came rushing back,” says Nimmala Raman, whose Telugu short film O’sey Balamma has beenselected for Sundance Film Festival 2026.
His family originates from Thiruvuru in Andhra Pradesh, but he was born and raised in Hyderabad prior to moving to the U.S. when he was around eight years old. Mr. Raman moves effortlessly between worlds — geographical, cultural and emotional. English comes easily to him, but he still thinks in Telugu. “This instinct has shaped my first film O’sey Balamma, which is a deeply personal work inspired by my grandmother and her companion (household helper),” he says, speaking to The Hindu.
Memories of the years he spent at his grandmother’s house before moving to the U.S. remain etched deep in his heart. The film draws from his childhood summers in Hyderabad, particularly the relationship between his grandmother and her house help, Balamma.
“They were both elderly,” he explains. “Balamma was younger than my grandmother, but not young in the way people might assume. She lived nearby but spent most of her time at our house. Over the years, she became more than a caregiver, she was a companion, a friend,” he recounts.
Walking down the memory lane, he smiles: “The two women would bicker, joke, drink tea together and share their everyday lives.” As a child, he accepted it as normal. “Only later I understood the layers, the solitude they both lived with, especially as younger family members migrated away. Their companionship grew out of necessity, but it was still bound by social and domestic roles,” he says.
It did not take long for him to notice similar relationships across families, elderly parents staying back while children moved away, domestic workers stepping into emotional spaces left vacant. “It’s intimate, but also fragile. There’s warmth, humour and affection, but also an inherent futility. That’s what I wanted to explore,” he explains.
Mr. Raman began developing the film while grieving his grandmother’s passing. “It was the first real loss in my life,” he says quietly. Making this film was a way of revisiting memory, as he knew every aspect of it sensorially and choosing Telugu was instinctive. “I wanted my first film to be in my first language,” he says. “I wanted to make it here, where it all began.”
After settling in New Jersey, Mr. Raman pursued mathematical finance and worked in New York’s finance industry. Yet cinema always lingered in the background. “Film was a way for me to stay connected to my culture,” he says.
Life in New York exposed him to a vibrant arts scene and he enrolled at Columbia University, where he pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Film. O’sey Balamma emerged from this period, not just as a student project, but as his very first short film.“This was my first project, and it went on to get selected for a global platform. That made it all the more special,” he says.
Encouraged by the appreciation from friends and well-wishers, Mr. Raman is already planning his next project — a feature-length film on volunteer tourism, highlighting the experiences of western volunteers in India. “It will be a dark comedy and may take a couple of years, with smaller projects in between,” he says.