4K RESTORATION
ASIAN PREMIERE
Director: Mira Nair
Runtime: 118 minutes
Country: USA, UK
Language: English
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scene and Some Coarse Language)
Awards
Best Film (Golden Ciak) and Best Original Screenplay
VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 1991
Full Synopsis
A luminous and groundbreaking cross-cultural romantic drama, Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala intricately interweaves the emotional experiences of a young couple in the American South. Years after her South Asian family was tearfully forced to flee their home in Uganda under Idi Amin’s regime, twenty-something Mina works at an Indian-owned motel in Mississippi. She falls for the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius, and their electric, sensuous romance challenges the prejudices of both their families, exposing the rifts between the region’s Indian and African American communities.
Described by the New York Times at the time as “sweetly pungent” and by the Washington Post as a “savoury multiracial stew”, Mississippi Masala’s layered portrayal of race and love remains unparalleled. Fueled by the charisma of cinematic icons Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury and treated with sharp comic timing, Mira Nair delivers a genre-defying, culturally-relevant masterpiece that celebrates love while confronting the uncomfortable truths of cultural displacement, colonialism and colourism.
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