In Urvashi Pathania’s Skin, Rhea’s younger sister Kanika chooses to bleach her skin despite Rhea’s fierce stand against colorism. Having built a social media following by challenging toxic beauty ideals, Rhea is shaken to see someone she loves seduced by the very standards she resists. When she uncovers the disturbing practices inside Markandeya Aesthetics—a gleaming clinic named after a Hindu sage—she rushes to intervene, only to be pulled into its insidious machinery.
Skin is a razor-sharp surreal horror that confronts society’s obsession with whiteness and purity. With neon pink lights, employees who speak the language of empowerment and self-care, the clinic becomes a chilling metaphor for how capitalism repackages oppression as aspiration.
Urvashi Pathania
Urvashi Pathania (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based writer and director whose films explore gender, sexuality, and cultural bereavement. For her feature screenplay, Skin, she was selected for the 2024 Sundance Screenwriters Lab and the 2023 Sundance Screenwriting Intensive, where she also received the Horror and Asian American Fellowships.
