Bhubaneswar, Sept. 20: The state is basking in the achievement of its daughters.

Close on the heels of Ananya Sritam Nanda's achievement - who made Odisha proud at the national level by winning the Indian Idol Junior-2015 singing contest - another woman has won laurels at the international level.

A short film edited by Anisha Acharya, 30, who hails from Jajpur, has won the prestigious Student Academy Awards, also known as the Student Oscar, for this year in the Narrative category.

The Student Academy Awards - the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' annual competition for college and university film-makers - were established in 1972 to provide a platform for the emerging global talent by creating opportunities within the industry to showcase their works.

The 42nd Student Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre at Beverly Hills in Los Angeles on Thursday. The Academy received a record number of entries this year - 1,686 films from 282 domestic and 93 international colleges and universities.

"The response to the film has been incredibly humbling. Winning the Student Academy Awards was like a dream. I hope that the film reaches more people. The biggest reward is to know that more people are watching it and hear their responses," Anisha told The Telegraph from Los Angeles over e-mail.

The film, Day One, is now in the selection stage for the main Oscars. If shortlisted, it would be nominated in the Short Film category.

Directed by Henry Hughes, the 25-minute short film is inspired by a true story where an Afghan-American woman on the heels of a divorce joins the US military as an interpreter. Anisha and her team made the film as a part of their thesis project at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles from where she graduated as a student of film editing in 2014.

For Anisha, films are a powerful medium to touch the hearts of her audience. "I love storytelling for its power to excite, hearten and uplift the soul. The biggest driving passion behind films for me is the power of making stories come to life," she said.

She said: "For my thesis film Day One, I was involved from the pre-production stages to the release. We didn't want a film that was all black-and-white, but one that captured shades of human element."

Besides the Student Oscar, the film has also won the Bafta US Student Film Award and the College Television Awards organised by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a number of other awards at various film festivals.

Anisha's father, Jagabandhu Acharya, 62, said: "She has always been extremely systematic in her life and that is her biggest strength. Though getting into films was not her childhood dream, she has always been a creative person."

She also has a degree from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bangalore, in accessory design.

Anisha is the granddaughter of freedom fighters late Kirtan Bihari Acharya and Taramani Acharya.

Though she has lived her growing years outside Odisha, she keeps visiting her hometown often.

"Of late, a number of young talents have emerged from Odisha, proving the rich cultural heritage of the place," she said.