The Close-up

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, we’re joined by the creative team behind Mississippi Masala, a Revivals selection in this year’s New York Film Festival. In this talk sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, writer Jhumpa Lahiri speaks with director Mira Nair, lead actress Sarita Choudhury, and Director of Photography Ed Lachman about this seminal screen romance of the 1990s. In Mississippi Masala, Sarita Choudhury plays 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 (played by Denzel 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 parab