Céline Roustan
The Spelling Bee competition is coming up and for Aishwarya, preparing for the contest is a family affair, as her father piles pressure on her, attaching to her success more than meets the eyes. In Winning in America, writer/director Amrita Singh captures a turning point in a father/daughter relationship, through the cultural lens of a South Asian immigrant family.
“I’ve always been struck by how immigrant kids juggle their desire to make their hardworking families proud with their own evolving ambitions”
Revealing that in 2019, seven out of the eight co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee were of South Asian descent, Singh herself was the younger sister of a Spelling Bee contestant and used that experience as inspiration for her short. “As an Indian-American filmmaker, I’ve always been struck by how immigrant kids juggle their desire to make their hardworking families proud with their own evolving ambitions”, she explains. Through the upcoming competition, and how it affects both Aishwarya, her father and their relationship, Singh explores the expectations that parents, especially immigrants, can put on their kids in the name of success and adapting to their new home country.
Winning in America is a subtle and layered coming-of-age story, where the generational divide is only the surface level of a disconnect between a teenage daughter and her father. The cultural background is what makes the story so compelling and allows the viewer to empathize with both characters and where they are coming from. Throughout the film, as we get to understand the two main protagonists the pacing is dictated by the mounting pressure and tension, as it becomes more palpable, the engagement levels rise with it.
Rithika Tudmilla as Aishwarya – a teenage girl struggling to balance expectations with her own desires.
It all leads to an unavoidable confrontation that wraps the film by prompting both characters to finally be honest with one another, and Aishwarya comes into her own, stepping out of the shadows of the expectations put on her. The sharp screenplay gives the dialogue its true emotional depth, as they both acknowledge their different meanings of success, and how that shall inform her future.
The family dynamic adds some levity and authenticity to the conflict at the core of the film and the believability of the cast gives the film a charming quality, but it’s really Rithika Tudmilla’s performance as Aishwarya that brings the subtleties of the screenplay to the screen. Her portrayal of this teenage girl caught between her own aspirations and the desire to please her father is incredibly compelling and makes her coming-of-age journey both captivating and satisfying.
Winning in America made its way around the festival circuit ahead of its online premiere, with notable stops at Chicago, LA Shorts and St. Louis. Singh is currently working on two projects, a feature film in development, workshopped as part of Production Lab Development Studio 2021 and a short mixed-media documentary made in collaboration with Still I Rise Films.