HALA New Auteurs

Talent attending: Minhal Baig (Director), Geraldine Viswanathan (Talent)

Breathing new life into the classic American high school coming of age movie, writer/director Minhal Baig, making her feature debut, masterfully navigates the usual tropes of the genre to craft this thoroughly authentic and heartfelt story. Hala, a first-generation Pakistani-American teenager, is caught between the loving but suffocating embrace of her religiously conservative parents and her own burgeoning sexuality and independence.

Geraldine Viswanathan (BLOCKERS) plays Hala with extraordinary skill and nuance, deftly conveying a shifting perspective on her parents and inhabiting Hala’s journey of confusion and conviction. Contributing to the realistic but highly charged emotional atmosphere are equally strong performances from a supporting cast that includes Gabriel Luna as her sensitive high school English teacher and Purbi Joshi and Azad Khan as her parents. –Ken Jacobson