Mississippi Masala

A conversation with Mira Nair, Sarita Choudhury, and cinematographer Ed Lachman will immediately follow the Sept. 25 screening and is available to all ticket-holders. Learn more here.

Denzel Washington stars opposite Sarita Choudhury in Mira Nair’s second fiction feature, which endures as a seminal screen romance of the 1990s. Choudhury is Mina, a Ugandan Indian from Kampala whose family leaves Uganda after the implementation of Idi Amin’s policy of forcefully expelling all Asians from the country. They wind up in Greenwood, Mississippi, living with relatives and trying to reconcile the trauma of their involuntary exile with assimilating to American culture. Some 17 years pass before Mina falls for a self-employed carpet cleaner, Demetrius (Washington), and their romance puts them in conflict with the local Black and Indian-American communities—not to mention Mina’s family. At once a powerful parable and a deeply personal work, Mississippi Masala remains an incisive examination of race relations and the tension between passion and tradition. A Janus Films release. New 4K digital restoration undertaken by The Criterion Collection and supervised by director Mira Nair and cinematographer Ed Lachman.

Mississippi Masala is sponsored by: