NASIR New Auteurs

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