Not even minutes had passed after the victory in the New York mayoral elections when a large group of cinephiles began to congratulate the newly elected Zohran Mamdani on social networks: Spike Lee, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Ilana Glazer… Not only did they participate in Mamdani’s campaign by calling undecided voters by telephone, but they also underlined the new mayor’s connection with the world of cinema: his mother is Mira Nair, the Indian director who won the Golden Lion of Venice with The monsoon wedding (2001) and the Camera d’Or at Cannes with his debut Salaam Bombay! (1988). By the way, for that award he went to the cinema independent American to perform Mississippi Masala (1991), with Denzel Washington, another link between the worlds of Mamdani and Spike Lee. Just in 1991 his son Zohran was born.
Mira Nair (Rourkela, 68) was, like her son today, a pioneer in her field. In her case, she was the first Indian auteur director known throughout the world. Daughter of a public official and a social worker, from a Hindu family originally from Punjab, Nair studied sociology and English literature, until joining a political street theater company.
Although she was still undecided between acting and directing, after turning down a scholarship to Cambridge, she accepted another to Harvard and at the age of 19 moved to the United States for the first time. There she specialized in documentaries and thought cinema was her passion. As she said decades later: “Today I am clear that what motivates me is teamwork. That’s why I will never be a photographer or a writer. Working with people, with life, is my strong point.”
In his second medium-length documentary, So far from India (1982), Nair tells the story of a Hindu newspaper salesman in New York, who gradually felt alienated from the city, from his situation, and therefore distanced himself from his family and his Indian heritage. The director continued to make one-hour documentaries of footage, but her leap to feature film came with it Salaam Bombay! (1988), an accurate portrayal of children’s life on the streets of the Indian city, on which her first husband, Mitch Epstein, was a producer and set designer. The film not only won the Camera d’Oro, but was an Oscar finalist for what was then the statuette for best foreign language film.
For his second feature film, Mississippi Masala, Nair traveled to Uganda to research the script. On March 29, 1989, he met an anthropology professor, Mahmood Mamdani, who, although Ugandan, was born in Bombay, and his family came from India: they were part of the diaspora caused by the British Empire. Mamdani shared an ethnic cocktail with the film’s protagonist, played by Sarita Choudhury, an actress who has become a regular in Isabel Coixet’s films, who falls in love with a carpet cleaner (Denzel Washington) in a small Mississippi town. For their part, Mamdani and Nair married in 1991 and Zohran was born in Kampala that year.
After his son’s triumph, Nair shared an Instagram story of producer and director Zoya Akhtar titled “Zohran, what a beauty”, accompanied by emoji of hearts and fireworks. “Zohran Mamdani officially won the New York mayoral election at the age of 34,” Akhtar’s post read.
In it Times of Hindustan, A few weeks ago, the director had assured that her son could make a difference. What if you wanted to dedicate yourself to cinema? “He should do what he wants. I don’t see him making films. He’s very involved in current events, politics and political issues. I think he can actively participate in the world to create change. He’s very interested in it.” And on whether they feel like foreigners in the United States, Nair said: “We are not foreigners at all. He is very much like us. He is not at all just American. He was born in Uganda and grew up between India and the United States. He feels at home in many places. He considers himself Ugandan and Indian at the same time. He is a very intelligent boy. At home we only speak Hindi.”
While they were looking for locations to shoot the protagonist’s childhood sequences Mississippi Masala, Nair found a house on the top of a hill in Kampala, overlooking Lake Victoria. The house appears in the film and the anthropologist and Nair purchased it. There, among the jacarandas, the mayor of New York lived the first five years of his life.
Nair has lived with her husband and son since the late 20th century in New York, when the anthropologist accepted a job offer at Columbia University. That’s why he participated in the collective film 11′09′’01 – 11 September (2002), September 11th. This move to the United States did not limit the director’s travels to film around the world: When I left Cuba (1995); Kamasutra, a love story (1996) or The monsoon wedding (2001), a film that was paired with various television films such as And Jesus… cried (1998) or blind with love (2002). With The monsoon wedding Nair won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The director is famous for filming quickly and efficiently, with strictly necessary equipment and only what interests her. An example: he refused to direct a chapter of the saga Harry Potter because he put his project first The good name (2007), a decision made after listening to her son Zohran, who insisted that only she could cover Jhumpa Lahiri’s book. And his interests are very diverse: in Vanity Fair (2004) adapted William Thackeray’s novel; In Amelia (2009) carried out a biopic legendary US Air Force pilot Amelia Earhart; In The reluctant fundamentalist (2012), in which a young Pakistani pursues success on Wall Street, reflects on the impact of 9/11 on the Pakistani immigrant community in the Big Apple…
Nair remains very close to Uganda: there she teaches young filmmakers in a film workshop convened annually (since 2015 she has also been a professor at Columbia University), and she directed there in 2016 The Queen of Katwe, the story of a girl who sees how her world changes when she learns to play chess. This was his last work for the big screen, as he maintained his series production for television networks and digital platforms.
A final emotional bond between mother and son. If the new mayor spoke of “genocide” to describe the Israeli invasion of Gaza, it is because there have never been doubts in his home: in 2013, Nair refused to participate in the festival in Haifa (Israel) and promised that he would set foot in that country only when “apartheid had disappeared”.
