On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, writer Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake) is joined by director Mira Nair, lead actress Sarita Choudhury, and cinematographer Ed Lachman to discuss Mississippi Masala, their 1991 film that is a Revivals selection of this year’s festival. NYFF Talks are presented by HBO. This talk is sponsored by Turner Classic Movies.

Mississippi Masala plays at the 59th New York Film Festival Wednesday, September 29 at 3:30pm. Standby only tickets may be available.

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.

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Watch/listen to the discussion on the film below and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunesSpotify, or Stitcher for more filmmaker conversations.