Over the last year I’ve moved to make my production company, Green Dragon Productions, an actual legal entity rather than just a name I slap on my films. It’s now registered (as of early 2024) and I’m working with some fine folks to try to get a feature film going. Wish us luck, and visit our website here: http://greendragonproductions.ca

I am super excited to be travelling to Trinidad & Tobago soon to make a short film loosely based on a trip my mother took right before she was married. “The Seas Between Us” takes place in the late 1960s, a time when contact with the “old country” was limited and Indian Trinidadians were only starting to connect with the wider diaspora. Part of my process will be to interview Indo-Caribbeans about that time and hear what their impressions of India were before mass media made it so easy to see and connect with the country of their ancestors. I’d love to hear your stories about that period and what you imagined Mother India to be like. Please send me an email to get in touch. I am very fortunate to have received support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council to embark on this adventure and collect and then tell these stories that are so rarely seen on our screens.

“The Seas Between Us” was formally entitled, “Indian Bride”.

I am thrilled that my short film, Beneath Us, will be having its Canadian premiere at the 10th annual MOSAIC INTERNATIONAL SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL @mosaic_misaff in Mississauga at the Living Arts Centre (4141 Living Arts Dr) at Sunday March 26th at 4pm. It is part of the Canadian Shorts Program and is being presented with @bipoctvfilm .

Thanks so much to the festival for giving us a chance to show this work. This film means a lot to me as a filmmaker and on a personal level. I had originally scheduled to shoot it in Tijuana in early 2019 but had to cancel when my mother passed away. We finally did go to camera late that year (just before the pandemic!) and finished it deep into our collective isolation. My brother Sohrab helped a lot with the film, some investment, and some medical advisement to help cast and production. He saw the film before he passed and was really proud of me and what we had accomplished together. That’s not something I will ever forget.

This’ll probably be the last screening at a festival for the foreseeable future so please do try to make it out if you can. ❤️

I owe a lot to our fantastic cast and crew. Thank you so much for your efforts and dedication to your craft. I’ll be posting tons more about the film and those wonderful people in the coming weeks. Thanks also to the @ontarioartscouncil that provided financial support.

The festival website is here: https://www.misaff.com where you can buy tickets and also check out some of the other fantastic films they have programmed. Follow the short on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/beneathusmovie/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/beneathusmovie

Beneath Us @ Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival

Very excited to announce that my short film Beneath Us will be having its world premiere in competition at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Chicago. The boutique festival seeks out “character-driven independent film programming constructed by bold and innovative storytellers for the purposes of education, entertainment, and thought-provoking discussion.” I hoped Beneath Us could be a film that would be used to spark conversations on labour, immigration, and law enforcement, so I’m thrilled that Blue Whiskey is giving us this venue.

Beneath Us is also a very personal film to me. I’ve spent a great deal of time in the labour rights world while making my documentary feature My Cultural Divide and other shorts about the subject, and many of my fiction films are about immigration and belonging, so in a way this is a meeting of those two themes. I’m also very proud of the collaboration between myself and Mexican producer Marla Arreola, and the mostly local cast and crew that ensured we told a story that was an authentic (fictional) take on the dangers of building walls instead of bridges.

Beneath Us will be screening at Chicago Filmmakers, 1326 W Hollywood Avenue, in Chicago, Illinois Thursday, on July 21 in the 7:00 PM block of the festival.

Beneath Us is a cautionary tale of what can happen when migrants looking for a better life are vilified and forced to live in an “underground” economy. People need to feel what it’s like working in a factory, lost in a life of debt and poverty, making the things we touch and wear everyday. This is the disconnect I’ve been trying to bridge with my films, first by being the second generation immigrant bringing viewers to back to my mother’s home country as I did in My Cultural Divide (2006), and now bringing the factory literally into our backyard. Do we choose to treat factory workers differently because they live a world away? Or is it that we don’t care where things come from at all, as long as they are cheap and plentiful?

I want to bring this dystopian but all too real world to screen, and fill it with believable characters with relatable human dreams and faults. Sometimes a fiction film is capable of allowing an audience to experience the reality of something better than a documentary, and this is what I hope to do with Beneath Us. The factory in the short may not exist within the borders of the United States or Canada, but the result is the same – workers are exploited and then ignored by the people who gladly buy the things they make.

OAC is only supplying some of the funding so our team will be reaching out to the community to try to finance the rest of the budget. Contact us through this website, and we’ll definitely keep you up to date when we start our crowdfunding campaign.

The Jungle Book

My short film Mr. Crab is playing with The Jungle Book outdoors in Regent Park! When I was in college a Russian man on a bus once pointed at me excited and said “Mowgli! Mowgli!” When I realized what he was saying I was offended at the possible racism but then took it as a compliment. Because apparently Russians love the Jungle Book and I may have been the first Indian boy he had ever seen. I guess? Anyhow my friends then often referred to me as Mowgli ironically after this. Having my film with a young Indian Caribbean boy and an animated crab play with the new adaptation of The Jungle Book might be the best thing ever.

Free Screening August 3rd 7pm. Regent Park Boulevard, outside Daniels Spectrum.

Thanks to Caribbean Tales and The Regent Park Film Festival.

From the Facebook event page:

Did you miss The Jungle Book in theatres this year? Or love it so much that you can’t wait to see it again? Come out to the Big Park for a free screening of the 2016 hit The Jungle Book!

Watch the trailer here: http://regentparkfilmfestival.com/events/event/under-the-stars-the-jungle-book/

Make sure to come out at 7pm for the pre-show for lots of family friendly acivities! The movie will start at 9pm!

The Movie and pre-show activities are FREE!

Co-presented with CaribbeanTales International Film Festival. CTFF will be presenting the short film Mr Crab, directed by Faisal Lutchmedial, prior to the feature film. We know you’ll be moved by the story of a young boy who uses his vivid imagination to escape the realities of family life.

Music and dance workshops provided by UforChange!
Enjoy delicious food for sale at Taste of Regent Park from 5-8:30!

ArtHeart will be doing face paint – so come ready with your favourite animal!

Keeping with the Jungle Book theme The Children’s Book Bank Canada will attendance with books for kids. We will a donations bin set up so if you would like to donate bring out any lightly used children’s books that you may have.

Daniels Spectrum Summer Series is produced by Artscape in collaboration with our 2016 program partners and is made possible thanks to the generous support of two anonymous donors.

I was recently asked to speak on a panel about Asian representation in film and television during the Asian Heritage Month Film Festival, in Toronto. I was joined by fellow filmmakers Amanda Joy, Jag Parmar, and Kieth Lock, and the panel was moderated by Bobby Del Rio.

It was a lively conversation, and it was great to hear how fellow diverse / asian filmmakers had moved forward in their careers – and what kind of barriers they faced along the way.

Apparently there is a video they are going to post, so I’ll link that here when I get it.

From left to right: Bobby Del Rio, Keith Lock, Jag Parmar, Amanda Joy, Faisal Lutchmedial

James Hoffman’s short film has been accepted into the NSI Online Short Film Festival, and you can watch it right here too.

The story: Avery wishes he were the kind of man to make friends, go back to school, find a girlfriend. Unfortunately he’s haunted by self-doubt, the ceaseless swirl of thoughts running through his head, and the ghost of the man he witnessed being murdered in the park. The ghost, Vik, wants the answer to one question: ‘Why didn’t you help me?’

The link to the festival, where you can watch the film in its entirety, is here: http://www.nsi-canada.ca/2013/02/things-worse/

Jaisalmer is one of the beautiful locations Path of Light will be filmed in.

The launch of the Path of Light Facebook page has been a fantastic success, with now over 3000 members who will get regular updates on our film, and get to see some interesting posts on Indian architecture, travel, and history.

The feature film, to be directed by Faisal Lutchmedial and produced by Catbird Productions (producer Katarina Soukup) and Green Dragon Productions, will be shot in India and Canada. The reason why we’re focusing on Indian tourism is because the two main characters are both foreigners – one has an Indian heritage, and the other is an outsider drawn in by the country’s history. We’re especially interested in discussing how tourism has changed the landscape of the country, and spread Indian philosophy worldwide. As we get closer to production we’ll be sharing behind the scenes videos, cast interviews, and featurettes on the tourist sites we’ll see in the movie.

Please join our community by clicking the like button below, and share the page with your friends.

CBC anthology program Canadian Reflections will be broadcasting the award winning (Writers Guild of Canada English script prize Festival du Nouveau Cinema) short drama Useless Things written, directed and starring Faisal Lutchmedial Sunday July 24th, 2011 at midnight. This will be the short film’s broadcast premiere, and it will be playing with a short comedy called King Chicken directed by Nicholas Bolduc.

Useless Things follows the thoughts of Shashin (played by writer / director Faisal Lutchmedial), a second generation immigrant struggling to find his identity following the loss of his parents (Ranjana Jha and Anshu Pathak) . His girlfriend Agnis (Erica Smith) pushes him and asks the hard questions while we follow his thoughts about his chosen path, memories of his family, and dreams of Hindu mythology.   As he goes through boxes Shashin begins to find meaning in the seemingly insignificant odds and ends that fill the cold house that once was his home.  Taking us backward and forward in time to follow his memories, Useless Things is a dreamily crafted journey of forgiveness, enlightenment, and self-discovery.

Useless Things was produced by Peripheria Productions, and supported by SODEC and the NFB FAP program.

Erica Smith and Faisal Lutchmedial in Useless Things

The short was also accepted into the NSI Online Short Film Competition, and will be playing in that series sometime in the next few months. More information on that soon. For now, enjoy the trailer for the film here.