Short Film 'Nani' Traces The Tensions & Tenderness Of A South Asian Migrant Family
This article explores 'Nani', Mainak Dhar’s short film screened at Yellowstone International Film Festival 2025, which examines migration, cultural identity, intergenerational conflict, and the emotional frictions of South Asian families living abroad. Through a story set during Eid, the film looks at how unspoken expectations, inherited values, and acts of care shape the dynamics of an immigrant household.
Migration rearranges the emotional architecture of a family. Distance, new customs, and the pull of individual freedom often sit uneasily with the baggage of inherited values that are reshaped in a new environment especially across generations. Within many South Asian households abroad, this tension becomes visible in the daily interactions and the quest for honing on a new more fluid identity fractured by two different cultures. 'Nani', Mainak Dhar’s short film, that was recently screened at the Yellowstone International Film Festival 2025, situates itself in this everyday terrain of expectation, conflict, and care.
Set on the last day of Ramadan, the film follows Maisha as she returns home for Eid and steps back into a household dense with unspoken grievances. This routine family gathering slowly reveals the underlying currents of resentment, stubbornness, and longing that hold the characters in place. As the day unfolds, hidden motives surface, and so do acts of defiance, highlighting a network of fragile but sweet bonds; especially how they bend and recover in small, telling ways. So far, Nani has had a strong festival run, which includes selections at the 20th Tasveer Film Festival, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Anchorage International Film Festival, and Dallas International Film Festival.
The short film draws from Mainak's own experiences as an Indian filmmaker living in Los Angeles, bringing poise to its themes of migration, cultural identity, and family bonds. He not only directed the film but also wrote and edited it. The project is produced by Shardul Sharma, Humaira Newaz, and Grace Presse, with cinematography by Samudranil Chatterjee, production design by Rohini Jadhav, and music by Rianjali Bhowmick.
Nani offers a short but is a replete glimpse into the dynamics of a South Asian immigrant family. There's the gruffness of the father revealing how often migrant dads cling to values learned in one country while trying to manage a family growing up in another. The mother, nurturing but silent when tensions rise, slips into the secondary role that many women occupy in such structures, caring while deferring to the “man” of the house. The grandmother sits on the margins, detached and adrift, shaped by displacement. These archetypes are familiar to families who live between cultures, yet the film threads through them a small glimmer of understanding, and an urge for joy that persists alongside the toil for survival.
Follow Mainak Dhar here and watch the teaser for the short film below:
