In SKIN, writer-director Urvashi Pathania delivers a haunting, emotionally resonant short that cuts deep into the psychological toll of colorism and the pursuit of self-worth. Following its world premiere at Fantasia, the film makes a striking US debut at the 2025 HollyShorts Film Festival, standing out as a searing blend of genre and cultural critique.

The story follows a young Indian American woman who accompanies her sister to a mysterious skin-lightening clinic. What begins as a hopeful quest for transformation soon unravels into something far more sinister. Drawing from Pathania’s own experiences with skin bleaching, SKIN unflinchingly examines how internalized bias, generational trauma, and societal beauty standards corrode identity from within.

A 2024 Sundance Screenwriters Lab fellow, Pathania skillfully fuses psychological horror with piercing emotional insight. Her direction transforms familiar spaces, mirrors, homes, bodies, into sites of dread, reflection, and reckoning.

Sureni Weerasekera and Shreya Navile give gripping, grounded performances that lend raw emotional gravity to the film’s surreal narrative. Kathryn Boyd-Batstone’s evocative cinematography intensifies the psychological unease, creating a visual world as alluring as it is disturbing.

Produced by Liz Lian and Nicole Palermo, SKIN is both visually arresting and thematically urgent. It doesn’t simply critique beauty ideals, it exposes the quiet violence they inflict with unflinching clarity.A bold and unforgettable entry in this year’s HollyShorts lineup, SKIN peels back the surface to reveal the deeply embedded scars of cultural expectation, and the haunting price of trying to be “enough”.