Live Presentation of my award-winning screenplay "Dear Brother" in NYC on June 11!

Last year, I was at the Cannes Film Festival shopping my script "Dear Brother" to producers at the Maison Des Scenaristes pitch competition. This year, I'm planning a live reading of the screenplay in NYC on 6/11, for a small audience, to be followed by a talk back moderated by religious scholar, and Barnard College faculty member, Hussein Rashid, Ph.D., a thought leader on Islam. Come out, support and engage! Tickets are FREE

Inspired by true events, Dear Brother is the fictional story of a Pakistani-American boxer who fights for his freedom after he's ensnared in an FBI counter-terrorism sting operation. Blending elements of the Denzel Washington classic, "The Hurricane" with Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" franchise, Dear Brother is the boxing epic reflective of our times.

The goal of the evening is to spark dialogue around the issues of how Islamophobia pervades the American law enforcement and criminal justice systems, and provide an opportunity for the writer to receive feedback for future development.

I just finished casting the reading with these amazing actors below:

Anish Roy

Hannah McGovern Gross

Rishi Mutalik

Alec Bandzes

Al Nazemian & Adeola Role

Erik LaPointe & Sunny Choi

Rahoul Roy & Ishani Das

Nitin Madan & Nikki Chawla

If you are interested in the background research that inspired the elements of the story, I’ve included links to articles and a Ted talk by journalist Will Potter below:

• The Sting: How the FBI Created a Terrorist, by Trevor Aaronson, The Intercept, March 16, 2015

• The United States Wants the World to Forget These Prisoners, by Molly Crabapple, Creative Time Reports, July 21, 2014

• Yassin at Ray Brook FCI, by Yassin Aref, Excerpts from a Letter from Yassin Aref, a prisoner at the Terre Haute Federal Prison’s CMU unit, to Carl Strock of the Schnectady Daily Gazette, September 10, 2007

• The Secret U.S. Prisons You’ve Never Heard Of, by Will Potter, TED Fellow Retreat 2015 - Stream the Video Below.

Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated -- even preventing them from hugging their children.

My Primetime Debut on ABC!

UPDATE: ABC posted the segment on What Would You Do's YouTube channel. Check it out below! 

This week, I'll be gracing the small screen on two, that's right TWO, consecutive nights. First tune in on Thursday 12:35am for Nightline's feature on ABC's hit show "What Would You Do" with host John Quinones. It'll take a behind the scenes look at how the show gets made with actor/producer interviews. 

Me photobombing John Quinones (center) taking a selfie with actors Siraj Huda and Marie Guinier, my TV parents. 

Then, tune in to the main event, on Friday, Aug 14 at 9:00pm ET, What Would You Do on ABC to see me and some fellow actors throw a curveball scenario at some unsuspecting bystanders. Add it to your calendars on your iWatches people! I made it easy for you here jeeeeez cahmaann. Thanks for all the support and love! It's about to get interesting...

K

Love from Austin Film Festival, Project Greenlight (& other stuff)!

It's been a while since I posted any news on here and that's not because I haven't been busy! If you follow me on social media, you already know.  Since my last post in April, I acted in two staged readings directed by Saheem Ali (A Free Man of Color - Broadway).  The first reading was entitled Tsunami, by Tunisian playwright, Jalila Baccar, which went up as a part of the PEN: World Voices: International Play Festival and dealt with the events around the Arab Spring's origins in Tunisia.  I played a reformed rebel fighter who'd lost his brother in the Syrian war.  I got to work with some amazing talent including Kathryn Kates, who plays Larry Bloom's mother on Orange is the New Black.

Next, Saheem asked me to be a part of the first staged reading of a play entitled Bhuta Kala, a NYU MFA Thesis by Nathaniel Shapiro.  This play was super interesting and also dealt with some very heavy material concerning the genocide that swept over Bali during the Communist purge in Indonesia between 1965-66.  The playwright told the story in the tradition of Balinese theater steeped in Hindu myths, but used humor throughout the piece while the dark events unfolded before the audience.  I played a young Communist who gets executed by his one-time classmates who remain loyal to the old guard.

After those two readings, as I alluded to in my last post, I became consumed by revising Dear Brother.  I spent the next two months getting it in shape to submit to a number of competitions. 

The fruit of that labor...I got on a list! Dear Brother wound up in the top 15% of scripts that advanced to the Second Round of the Austin Film Festival Screenplay competition.  Unfortunately, that's where it topped out, but the sheer volume of submissions (close to 7,000) makes that feat somewhat noteworthy.  So I may join fellow screenwriters in Austin come October, we'll see!

Meanwhile, the director of Lily In The Grinder has apparently been busy trying to get on some lists of his own because the film is a PROJECT GREENLIGHT finalist! Right this very moment, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (or probably their interns) are curled up in their PJ's watching my mug on a big projection screen, how wild is that!? 

That's all for now my peoples.  In a few hours, I'll be cloud-hoppin' on my way to a vacation.  Curious as to where? Follow me on twitter and instagram! I need to recharge so I can put out the next hotness I have in store :P

Peace

K

New York premiere of Dear Brother short!

Click through for tickets! 

If you've known me at all for the past four years or so, you have, at one point or another asked me what I'm working on and, if I held your attention long enough, I eventually got to the part where I described a screenplay that I've poured most of my non-acting free time into- mind, body and soul, titled Dear Brother.

For those that are unfamiliar, the logline: An English born Pakistani boxer, Saleem, fights for his freedom after being wrongfully convicted of planning terrorism.

The script tallied a couple wins at competitions/festivals,  but it needed some more work to really hit all the notes that a powerful story like this ought to.  Well, I've been plugging away at it and luckily, along the way, I met a seasoned and well accomplished screenwriter/Sundance-alum, who believes in the story and has graciously guided me through the most recent round of revisions.  Deep breaths...I am thrilled about this rewrite. 

SO, what better time than now to screen a 3 minute short film adapted from Dear Brother !? I shot this film in response to a competition that a London-based theatre company named Headlong Theatre organized in honor of the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001.  When I found out about the competition, I had exactly three weeks to put the film together. That meant writing it, pre-production (i.e. casting, location scouting, etc.), shooting, and post, condensed into a three-week span, squeezed in between work and other life necessities like food, air and water.  Favors were called in and graciously answered (notably, my brothers; Abhijeet for coming up from New Jersey in spite of the flu, to lend his editing expertise, and Samarjeet for remotely scoring the opening music).  

In the end, we ended up with this short that you can view on my website OR you can come watch it on the BIG(ger) screen on Saturday, April 19th, when it screens as a part of Katra's monthly film series alongside some stellar films including, one starring Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston....!? Yes, I'm not burnin BLUE ICE over here. That's the honest to Jah #TROOF.  So please come out and watch, support, mingle.  Tix available here. 

Hope to see you all there! If not, you will probably miss out taking pictures with me like this classic one with the cast of Lily In the Grinder which screened on April 1st.  I clearly thought I had to kneel like it was the JV baseball team photo. Go Cougars! (I was next to a flight of stairs OK!?)

View fullsize

Cast and Director photo - David Gregory, Dan Amboyer, moi, and Dir. Michael Morgenstern at the Anthology Film Archives, NYC.  April 1, 2014. Visit Lily In the Grinder's facebook page for more pics and updates on this film!

ICYMI: My article in India Abroad's "Desi View"

Catch me in "Soundwaves" going up @FringeNYC !

I'm thrilled to announce that I just got cast in an amazing play, Soundwaves: The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan  by Joe Martin, produced by the Bridge Theatre Group.  It was an O'Neill National Playwrights Contest semi-finalist and tells the story of Noor, the daughter of a renowned Indian Sufi preacher who came of age in France just as Nazi Germany began its march into Poland.  

Although she was raised with the Sufi principles of universal love and non-violence (ahimsa ), she and her brother, Vilayat, played by myself, choose to draw a line in the sand and join Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany.  Noor joins England's SOE forces (Special Operations Executive) and becomes a spy who is dropped behind enemy lines in France where she would relay vital messages during the war until she was ultimately betrayed by a double-agent.  Meanwhile, Vilayat joins the Navy and becomes a pilot who conducted several sorties and suffered the tragic loss of brothers in arms.  Watch the video below for a snapshot of Noor's life: 

A short film on the AMAZING life of Noor Inayat Khan.

If you can't tell by now, I am ecstatic to be involved in this project. These are the kinds of stories I want to help bring to life and folks like the Bridge Theatre Group need your support to do it.  Please donate to their indiegogo campaign and come see Soundwaves at the NY Fringe Fest (SUN 8/18 @ 7:45; MON 8/19 @ 4:15; THU 8/22 @ 2; FRI 8/23 @ 9; SUN 8/25 @ 3)

 - As always Thank You for the love :)