Seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala struggles to balance desire with her family, cultural, and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.
Cinematography
Dreamy skate sequences that feel like memories you're not sure you have.
Acting
Viswanathan's face does what scripts wish they could write.
Direction
Baig trusts you to read the room without explaining it.
Director
Minhal Baig
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Baig expanded her own 2016 short film, drawing from her Pakistani-American upbringing in Chicago's suburbs — the specificity is the point.
The mother's arc was rewritten after test screenings; originally more antagonistic, the final version lets Eram crack open too.
US
