NEW DELHI: It's not just Slumdog that has put India on the Oscar map. Smile Pinki, the story of an Indian girl cursed with a cleft lip, has also helped lift India's image by winning the best documentary short subject film prize at the 81st Academy Awards this year.

Pinki, who has been completely cured of the curse of having been born with a cleft lip in a free operation, is the central focus of the film, made by Megan Mylan.

The 39-minute Smile Pinki is a chronicle of how Pinki from Mirzapur district in Uttar Pradesh, along with thousands of others from different parts of India, are operated upon without charge, at a hospital funded by the international charitable organisation ‘Smile Train’.

The film was premiered at SilverDocs and was also nominated for best documentary short at the 2008 International Documentary Association 2008.

Director-producer Megan Mylan is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and Goggenheim Fellow. Earlier, her film Lost Boys of Sudan, co-directed with Jon Shenk, won an Independent Spirit Award and was nominated for two national Emmys.