Mississippi Masala

Wednesday 27 May at 7.30pm

Mira Nair | USA | 1991 | 118 min | PG coarse language

Mira Nair’s second feature is an incisive examination of race relations and cultural tensions in the American South, featuring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury as star-crossed lovers.

“Twenty years after immigrating with her family to Greenwood, Mississippi, after dictator Idi Amin’s expulsion of Uganda’s Asian population, Mina (Sarita Choudhury) has assimilated to her adoptive home, where she works in the family motel chain—so much so that she thinks nothing of falling in love with a local boy, self-employed carpet-cleaner Demetrius (Denzel Washington). Moving beyond the division between Black and white that’s long defined depictions of the Deep South, Nair’s film depicts an increasingly diverse New South, revealing new discoveries and old resentments. The drama unfolds against a landscape of timeless beauty, the particularities of the dulcet Mississippi light captured by cinematographer Ed Lachman.” – Metrograph