South Asian

Amu

Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2005 Bombay International Film Festival, AMU focuses on Kaju, a young American/Indian woman and recent UCLA graduate. Against her adoptive mother’s wishes, Kaju returns to the village in India she left when she was orphaned at 3-years- old due to a malaria epidemic (or so she’s been told). Naïve, idealistic, and stubborn, she explores the slums of Delhi with the assistance of a serious college student named Kabir, whose politics aren’t in line with his privileged upbringing. It was there in Delhi that in 1984, an uprising against the Sikhs took place after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and thousands were slaughtered in riots. As Kaju and Kabir begin to investigate the identity of her real parents and piece together the truth, they open the door to a powerful and moving story of loss and cover-ups. Writer-director Bose was a student in Delhi at the time of the massacre, and AMU is driven by a sense of outrage still felt today.