The Gas Station Attendant

As a young boy, H. N. Shantha Murthy ran away from home to escape the extreme poverty of his Indian village. He travelled the country in search of work, dreaming that one day his life would change. It did, following a serendipitous encounter with a couple visiting India from Houston,Texas. But life in the States was not the “American Dream” come true.

Karla Murthy’s film weaves together home videos and phone conversations recorded while her father worked as a gas station attendant in Texas.  Alongside his story, she reflects on her own experiences as the daughter of immigrants (her mother is from the Philippines), trying to make a life of her own in New York City, and now as a mother of two boys. 

What emerges is an intimate love letter – a meditation on a complicated father-daughter relationship and a poignant tribute to the immigrant working class.

Sheffield DocFest World Premiere - International Competition Special Mention Jury Prize
Nashville Film Festival - Best Feature Documentary
San Diego Asian Film Festival - Best Feature Documentary
Austin Asian American Film Festival - Best Feature Documentary

'“DEVASTATING AND BEAUTIFUL”
Movie Buff

'“PROFOUNDLY EMOTIONAL AND HONEST”
Cinerama

“ENDLESSLY SURPRISING… EXQUISITE”
Documentary Magazine

Karla Murthy is an award winning documentary film director  and news producer.  Her work was described by the Columbia Journalism Review as “compelling, informative and compassionate.”  She began her career working for the veteran journalist Bill Moyers and has worked as a producer, shooter, and correspondent for several PBS news programs. She was nominated for an Emmy for her report “The Battlefields” on farmworkers fighting for better wages in Immokalee, Florida.

Her directorial debut, The Place That Makes Us, premiered on the public television series America ReFramed and screened at festivals including DOC NYC, Big Sky, and the Cleveland International Film Festival and at the United Nations World Cities Day Event. The film earned multiple awards, including Best of the Festival at Arlington, Best Feature at Better Cities, and Emerging Documentary Filmmaker at Woods Hole. 

She went on to direct and edit the short documentary Love, Jamie, about a transgender artist incarcerated in Texas. The film premiered at OUTFEST LA where it  won the Grand Jury Prize for Outstanding Documentary Short, and was featured in People, THEM, Hyperallergic, and Texas Monthly, which named it “one of the best short documentaries.”  It is currently streaming on PBS American Masters.

Her latest feature, The Gas Station Attendant—inspired by her father—is a co-production with ITVS, Firelight Media, and the Center for Asian American Media. It premiered at Sheffield DocFest 2025 in the International Competition and won the Special Mention Jury Award. It also won Best Documentary Feature at the Nashville Film Festival,  the San Diego Asian Film festival and the Austin Asian American Film Festival.  The film is currently screening at festivals and in select theaters nationwide, and will be nationally broadcast on POV in summer 2026.

Karla is of Filipino and South Asian descent. She grew up in Texas, studied classical piano at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, and graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in Religion and Computer Science.  She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Film Fatales,  A-DOC and SAJA, and is an alumni of the Third World Newsreel Workshop.  Her work has been supported by ITVS, the Firelight Media William Greaves Production Fund, Center for Asian American Media, Women Make Movies, the New York State Council of the Arts, Vital Projects Fund,  the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, The Chimaera Project, the Inmaat Foundation, and Chicken and Egg Films, and the Yaddo Residency.