Sunday, august 1 2021

monsoon wedding

With the short film The Foreigner

The chaos of misunderstandings, misgivings, generational strife, romance, and deep secrets rain down on a modern Punjabi family as they gather in Delhi to celebrate a traditional Hindu wedding. Indian-American director Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding celebrates the richness of love not simply through story, but also through one of the most iconic colour palettes in cinema history. Glowing marigolds and crimson red saris may be quintessentially South Asian, but their celebratory spirit translates worldwide. 

Colourful cross-cultural celebration is a motif also explored in this evening’s short film pairing. In Jamaican-Québécoise, Toronto-based filmmaker Maya Annik Bedward’s The Foreigner, a hapless protagonist is drawn in by a neon glow to a Brazilian basement dance party, one where you don’t need to know the language or footwork to feel like part of the community. (TOPS fans also won’t want to miss Maya Annik Bedward’s brand-new short film Projections, funded by TOPS as part of our 10th anniversary, premiering over Labour Day weekend later this season.)