Former Malaysiakini journalist Indrani Kopal recently won the "best short documentary" for her film "The Game Changer" at the Harlem International Film Festival in New York.

The festival was held from Sept 10-14.

Indrani's film will also be screened at an Academy-Award qualifying festival next month.

Apart from that, the film- which centers on a choreographer using arts intervention to change the lives of long-term prisoners- will be screened during the 23rd annual Hot Springs (Arkansas) Documentary Film Festival next month.

The winner of the festival's "Spa City Award for Best Documentary Short" will qualify for consideration in the documentary short subject category of the annual Academy Awards, if it meets all Academy rules, wrotes Indrani’s alma mater, Hofstra University.

The Hot Springs screening is the eighth festival invitation for "The Game Changer”.

Indrani, who is now a graduate documentary student at the university's Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, had worked with Malaysiakini for six years.

Her most recent festival invitations include the New Filmmakers New York Film Festival on Oct 1 and Sun and Sand, the Mississippi Film and Music Festival, from Oct 16-26.

"The Game Changer" is the first installment of Indrani's thesis project.

The 2012 Fulbright scholarship recipient is now working on her second film in the series, which will focus on the six men who took part in the dance programme, all of whom have since been released from prison.