Private Project

Ayesha

Ayesha's secret weekend plans with her boyfriend take an unexpected turn when her immigrant father encounters a US veteran suffering from post traumatic stress.

  • Ambarien Alqadar
    Director
    The Ghetto Girl, Four Women and a Room
  • Ambarien Alqadar
    Writer
  • Freya Adams
    Key Cast
    Advantageous, Damages, Kal Ho Na Ho (Hindi)
  • Cameron Scoggins
    Key Cast
    Z: The Beginning of Everything, Nashville, Hunter & Game, Only Human, The Happy Sad
  • Riti Sachdeva
    Key Cast
    Lemonade Mouth, Uncommitted
  • Rehan Ansari
    Key Cast
    Unburdened
  • Dita Gruze
    Producer
    The Happy Sad
  • Esra Saydem
    Producer
    The Happy Sad, Across the Sea
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    18 minutes 40 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 28, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    8,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
  • Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Grant
  • The Carole Fielding Award
  • Ben Lazaroff Screenwriting Award
  • Temple University Graduate Award
Director Biography - Ambarien Alqadar

Ambarien Alqadar is an independent documentary filmmaker from New Delhi, India currently trying to find new roots in upstate New York. Ambarien was a Fulbright Scholar at Temple University, Philadelphia from where she graduated with an MFA degree in 2012. Her current day job involves a full time teaching position at The Rochester Institute of Technology Film Program, New York.

Her first film, Who Can Speak of Men was reviewed as ‘revolutionary’ for its portrayal of contemporary Muslim women at The British Film Institute Film Festival's Cinema of the Diaspora section. Since then she has shot, directed, edited and produced several projects notable amongst those are Four Women and a Room, Pakistan: A Nation’s Journey, Elsewhere, Silent Waters and The Ghetto Girl. Her award winning films have been official selections to prominent festivals in India, UK, US, Canada, Spain and Germany. They have been broadcast on national TV networks in India and UK and screened in contexts of art galleries, museums, academic and interdisciplinary research.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Drawing from hate crime cases against South Asians in US, a documentary in progress about an immigrant South Asian taxi driver and my own experiences of being a south Asian woman born into a Muslim family, I envision this film as a unique visual and aural exploration of a fractured consciousness that emerges through the fracturing of a home. Not only is this perspective unique in how it gives voice to a largely under represented experience, it also opens up possibilities for a more universal dialogue around the loss, pain and transformations that have marked America since Sept 11- the breath and scope of the tragedy foreclosing easy definitions of who the victims are and how they suffer.