Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

I've resisted overtly political films. I want my films to imagine a world that doesn't exist yet but is within reach. AMMA'S PRIDE shows mother Valli unapologetically supporting her trans daughter. Audiences say, "I want to be like Valli" or "I wish my mother was like her." PRACTICE OF US follows two queer adults — David, who came of age during the AIDS epidemic, and Karthik, when queerness was criminalized in India. Marriage equality and naturalization once offered security, but in 2026 with ICE enforcement and rollbacks of queer protections, their multiracial family's life feels as precarious as the worlds they survived as children. The film shows them building intergenerational bridges and practicing active healing. I want to engage multiracial queer families, transracial adoptive families, and immigrant families who feel unseen. The goal is to give audiences tools to examine assumptions about family, belonging, parenting, and healing estranged relationships.

Through the PRACTICE OF US, I'm shifting from observational documentary to participant-driven, catalyzed non-fiction. Rather than observing life unfold, the film places artistic tools in participants’ hands, creating conditions and documenting what unfolds. Life-size leather puppets drawn from South Indian Tholu Bommalata shadow puppetry become a shield through which Karthik and his estranged mother speak truths about queerness, rejection, and love unspoken for a decade. As they train actors to interpret their feelings, they witness their story from outside themselves. Repeating it over and over reduces the pain. David's Super 8 vignettes allow him to revisit and reinterpret the spaces that shaped his trauma — the very spaces he now takes his children. Rather than passively reshaping memory, filmmaking empowers participants. These aren't stylistic choices but dramaturgical interventions that change what becomes possible between people on screen, inviting audiences to imagine new dialogue with estranged family.