NASIR New Auteurs

NASIR

AFI FEST Lead Screening Committee Member Julia Kipnis leads a conversation with filmmaker Arun Karthick.

For textile salesman Nasir, the minor setbacks of the day to day are surmountable. Despite his meager pay, he is grateful to be able to support his wife and adopted son Iqbal, who is disabled. But Nasir is Muslim in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India where Hindu nationalism is pervasive and violent extremism is on the rise. Customers treat him with disdain and propaganda erupts through loudspeakers on the streets, but the words he holds important are in the love letters he writes to his wife and in the poems he quietly recites. This carefully composed and critically important sophomore feature from Tamil filmmaker Arun Karthick, which won the NETPAC Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, issues a powerful and globally resonant statement on the dangers of presumed safety as an oppressed minority.
–Malin Kan

Arun Karthick is an independent filmmaker based in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Self-taught, he began producing and directing short films at 17. He made his debut feature SILVAPURANAM: THE STRANGE CASE OF with a Gap Financing award at Film Bazaar 2014 and the film premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016 in the Bright Future section.

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Details

Country: India, Netherlands

Year: 2020

Director: Arun Karthick

Screenwriter: Arun Karthick

Producer: Mathivanan Rajendran

Executive Producers: Mathivanan Rajendran, Nirmal Lawrence

Director of Photography: Saumyananda Sahi

Editor: Arghya Basu

Production Designer: Mausam Aggarwal

Cast/Featuring: Koumarane Valavane, Sudha Ranganathan, Yasmin Rahman, Sabari, Bakkiyam Sankar

Running Time (minutes): 78

Language: Tamil

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