18-year-old Razaa plays a violent game on her phone as she and her mother Sabeen wait at a gynaecologist’s clinic to get an abortion. Sabeen is appalled at her nonchalance. As they argue about the morality of the difficult decision they must make, Razaa's father calls. They cannot let him find out about the pregnancy...
Pooja Tolani is an Indian screenwriter who makes her directorial debut with the short film Razaa. Her screenwriting work includes Sacred Games 2 (directed by Anurag Kashyap, Neeraj Ghaywan, creatively headed by Vikramaditya Motwane), Lust Stories 2: The Mirror (directed by Konkona Sensharma) and Sarfira (directed by Sudha Kongara). Pooja was selected for the U.S State Department International Visitors Leadership Program: Scripting Change in Contemporary Hindi Cinema - a three week exchange program for women screenwriters working in the Hindi film industry. She has been awarded the Asia Society New Voices Fellowship for Screenwriters funded by Time Warner. She was mentored by director Sriram Raghavan during this programme. She has also served as a member of the Executive Committee of Screenwriters Association - a trade union for Indian screenwriters. She is an alumni of the Film and Television Institute of India. She lives in Mumbai, India.
The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is the oldest, most prestigious film festival screening premieres of feature, documentary and
short films made from, of, and about the Indian subcontinent in the Independent, arthouse, alternate and diaspora genres.
