WINNER: Grand Jury Award for New York Short Film & Audience Award for Best Narrative Short
at 36th Annual NewFest Film Festival
ZARI
".ZARI is a film that is both relatable in the queer experience around the assumptions of heterosexuality as well as universal as it relates to the relationships between the characters."
Jurors Kia Brooks, Luca Intili and Jaboukie Young-White, 36th NewFest Film Festival
FEATURED IN
About The Project
“Zari” is a 15-minute cross-cultural coming of age short film that explores queerness, gender expression, and identity, set in and around a Mumbai sari store amidst preparations for a wedding.
The project, written and directed by U.S.-based filmmaker Shruti Parekh, recently won a competitive grant from a prestigious Asian American film organization and production is slated for a 5-day shoot on location in mid-September, 2023.
ZARI: THEATRICAL TRAILER
SEP CREATOR | SHRUTI PAREKH
Writer/Producer/Director
Shruti is an Atlanta-bred, Brooklyn-based Indian American filmmaker who tells intimate and incisive stories of life on the margins of society. Her award-winning work spans fiction, documentary, journalism, and animation. Shruti’s short films have played at Oscar-qualifying festivals, and her first narrative short Blood Moon won the Audience Award at the South Asian Film Festival of America.
Shruti has a BA from Brown University and an MFA in Directing from UCLA, where she received the Jack Nicholson Distinguished
Student Director Award and the Edie and Lew Wasserman Film Production Fellowship.
“Zari” will be her fourth short film.
CAST AND CREW
This is the space to introduce the business’s team and what makes it special.
Kamal Batra
Zeyb / Zari
Hardeep Gupta
Nandita
RICHA Kalra
Rita
AEsha soni
Neelu
Producers
Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE)
Producer
Janet Yang Productions
Producer
Icchi The Cat
Producer
Snarky Elephant Productions
Associate Producer
...and
Casting Associate
The project takes us on a journey that is not conventionally seen within the South-Asian community and we love it.
- VEYLEX
Insomnia finds a hearty dose of laughs and sexuality to keep things entertaining, and Reddy injects Nikhil with enough charm and vulnerability to keep him relatable, even at his most neurotic.
- David Reddish, QUEERTY
Vishaal Reddy’s ‘Insomnia’ gives a different perspective of Indian-Americans
- Staff Writer, NEWS INDIA
You learn more about these characters in the short episodes than you do in many of the TV shows trending on Netflix.
- Sharan Dhaliwal, BURNT ROTI
"Meet Vishaal Reddy, the creative genius behind a new dark comedy series, Insomnia"
- Avani Thakkar, ELLE INDIA
...Refreshing and revolutionary...the best thing Reddy does is to embrace his nuanced identity in a way that previous representations rarely do.
Proma Khosla, MASHABLE
“Insomnia has quickly become a-don’t-miss web series and an important source of adding shade and color to what can seem like black and white issues"
- Anubhuti Kumar,
BROWN GIRL MAGAZINE