Mira Nair

Mira Nair, a veteran Filmmaker, based in New York Click to look into! >> Read More... City, was born on 15 October 1957 at Rourkela, Odisha, to Mr. Amrit Nair (an Indian Administrator Officer) and Mr. Parveen Nair (a Social worker who used to work for illiterate children). She spent her early childhood in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha and then moved to New Delhi. Later, she left home to attend a Missionary School (Loreto Convent Tara Hall) in Shimla, where she developed an obsession with English Literature. After Tara Hall, Mira went on to study Sociology at Miranda House at Delhi University. To gain the best education available, Nair went to Western schools, and at nineteen she accepted a full scholarship to Harvard University rather than accepting scholarship by Cambridge University. Mirabai Films, her production company, specialized in making Films on Indian society, within the economic, social or cultural spheres. Before movie making, she was interested in acting.

At the start of her filmmaking career, she primarily made documentaries. Her first documentary was Jama Masjid Street Journal, which was an eighteen-minute film that explored the streets of Old Delhi and has some conversations with Indian Locals. The second documentary she made was So Far From India, which was a fifty-two-minute film. It focussed on an Indian newspaper dealer who lives in the New York, while his wife, who was pregnant, waited for him to return home. It is recognized, as a Best Documentary winner at the New York’s Global Village Film Festival and American Film Festival. She made her third documentary, India Cabaret, released in 1984, which proved out to be her first controversial film. It was a fifty-nine-minute film which proclaimed the exploitation of female strippers living in Bombay. Nair kept up with the controversial movie making.

Her fourth and last documentary, Children of a Desired Sex, made for Canadian Television, explored amniocentesis. After these four documentaries, she made her first motion picture, Salaam Bombay, which released in 1988. Though the movie won twenty-three international awards, it was not good at the box office, but the most notable wins were the Prix du Public and Camera d’Or, in 1988, at the Cannes Film Festival. Salaam Bombay, in 1989, was also approved for Best Foreign Language Film, at the Academy Awards. She made the Mississippi Masala in 1991.This film uttered the love of a carpet-cleaner business handler, for his one of the Indian Client’s daughter, like Salaam Bombay, in 1992 this movie got the standing ovation at Sundance Film Festival then, at the Venice Film Festival, it was the recipient of three awards.

Her most notable film, Monsoon Wedding (2001), was about a Punjabi Indian Wedding and was awarded, at Venice Film Festival, with Golden Lion award, making her be the first female recipient of the award. Her other notable movies include Hysterical Blindness which made in 2002, then in 2004 she made the Vanity Fair, in 2006 she came up with The Namesake Click to look into! >> Read More... , then she made Amelia in 2009 which was Jhumpa Lahiri’s Earhart biopic. She also made The Reluctant Fundamentalist in 2013.The next was Queen of Katwe in 2016) which depicted the life of Ugandan Chess Prodigy Phiona Mutesi. She makes short films too like, “A fork, a Spoon, and A Knight.” Also “11’09”01 September 11” in 2002, then she made “How It Can Be in2008”.In the same year, 2008, “Migration “was made, in 2009 she made “New York, I Love You(2009)”. While taking photography classes, she met her first husband, at Harvard University, Mitch Epstein. They divorced in 1987, and she met her second husband, Mahmood Mamdani in 1988, who, like her, is also a teacher at Columbia University. In July 2013, to protest Israel’s Polities towards Palestine, she declined an invitation at the Haifa International Film Festival.