Filmmaker Roopa Rao’s debut web series The Other Love Story is an innocent love story between two girls set in the 90’s era in India.

After facing rejection from several producers, Roopa turned to crowdfunding to help bring this original and realistic story to the society, now the web series is leading nominations at the NYC Web Fest, with six nominations.

Roopa says,

When I made this series, I had no expectations about what I wanted from it or where it would go. I just wanted it to release and share the story, and hoped that people were engaged and entertained with each episode. I am thrilled that we have been noticed by a platform like this and that we are competing on a global level for some of the top awards at the festival.”

Roopa says that though her project deals with a sensitive topic and the medium she chose to narrate it on wasn’t conventional, she was glad she did it.

This project happened organically. I have been a writer and like to tell stories. I must have written this story when I was in college. But I was waiting for someone else to make it because I didn’t know how to. Since then, I kept thinking of a web series because video-sharing channels started monetizing it. This was a great platform for storytellers like us who want to tell something as it is and with freedom of expression. It took me some time to research the medium, and given that it doesn’t require big budgets and there is no distributor in between who you have to satisfy, I found the medium encouraging. Also, when I approached producers, they were apprehensive due to the subject and the medium. In that way, it has been a long journey and fight, but here we are today, with nominations at a festival like this and it has been worth it.”