Pacchai takes the audience through what begins as a fairly normal day in the life of Kala, a 20-something Tamil-American woman straddling both identities (and her white boyfriend), but a normal day in her life feels like Uncut Gems-levels of mounting pressure, secrecy, and conflicting interests. Safdie directs Past Lives. 

Here are the compounding factors: 

1. Everyone in your family has had an arranged marriage and since you can’t pony up and tell your family about your loving white boyfriend, you keep getting set up with Tamil men. 

2. Everyone around you knows exactly what your life should look like except for you. 

3. Your mom is mad at you, 

4. Your boyfriend wants you to take him seriously, and 

5. You have a date with a boy you grew up with and used to hate in twenty minutes. It’s fine, right? It’s fine.

Oh and:

6. He’s hot now. 

This is not an immigrant story. Is it an immigrant premise? Sure. But those are different. This short is funny to all (comedy transcends experience), but will connect with any woman who has quieted what she wants in order to please everyone but herself.

I believe this story will speak to people because there is so much desire to be known. As we all become more and more isolated (it's those damn phones), we attempt to find love anywhere and everywhere. The merging of a long time cultural tradition with the age old desire to be loved and love finds itself in the modern sheets of a Bushwick apartment, in the soft leather Onitsukas of a confused woman, the yearning of an indie musician, and the forgetten Tamil of a old childhood friend.

I have always been enamored by the false binary of whiteness and my cultural identity. For a long time I felt that I would always have to give up on something, always a little misunderstood, in translation. As someone who grew up in predominately white spaces, all my firsts have been with people who can’t exactly say my middle name. At the same time, in Tamil spaces, I feel like I’m always recalibrating myself to be acceptable, hush hush about my hyper American values. What is the girl with tattoos in the vintage Brandy Melville saying in fluent Tamil? Usually, she’s saying something about wanting to be seen. 

And so I write SubStack articles and standup, I sit on pages of unpublished fiction, and drunk rant about how I’m going to end up alone because the grass is always greener than whatever date I’m on. But in recent years, I’ve unlearned this binary, because it assumes that my identity as an artist and a writer and a performer is separate from my identity as a Tamil ponnu. And it’s not. I cannot be stripped from myself. 

And neither can Kala. Kala is a people pleaser, hoping to satisfy everyone, resentful no one is acknowledging how hard that is, searching for someone to get all the different parts of her. But this film isn’t about finding a boy fluent in Kala. It is about collapsing the idea of a compartmentalized self. And allowing the unanswered maybe to exist as honest truth. I mean it feels better to live like that, anyway. 

This story could be for everyone, but not all depictions of truth are universal. People who have been torn by performing in their relationships will feel so deeply seen by this character and this film. Trying to balance who you are while figuring her out and also wishing she could be witnessed by the people closest to her is the plight of everyone in their early 20s. Or at least that's what people keep telling me when I tell them I feel crazy.

Writing this story was like doing my hair without a mirror. I didn't write it to create something beautiful, I wrote it to get the curls out of my face, so I could work. And then I saw myself in the words, and I saw something worth memorializing. And so I put together a team of people who could do that. And together they have given dimensionality something I love.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve defined myself as a writer above all else (I was a very pretentious kid), so it means the world to me to be trusted with Shenba’s baby. I believe very strongly in the preciousness of stories. It is already nearly impossible to translate something from brain to page, and I could not be more honored to be in charge of translating from page to screen. I view my job as the steward of the script’s vision, like I’m the 5 year old ring bearer marching a pillow carrying semi-precious jewels over the threshold to the couple whose lives will change with their arrival. 

I feel so thrilled and lucky and lowkey blessed by the universe to have this project as my directorial debut. My goal with this film is to get you as deep into Kala’s head as possible. I want everyone to feel her stress, her desire (and the void it dwells within), her earned exhaustion after a lifetime of tightrope walking, and, finally (finally!), her first feelings of lightness.

I love that Pacchai maintains the tone life takes. In the limited American media that features or centers Brown women, the nuances of their lives are reduced to jokes or trauma porn for what the writers assume is an entirely white audience. Any aspect of their lives that doesn’t fit within those bounds is deemed too complicated and cut out. This script raises the often ignored into consciousness, and treats the often sensationalized as just part of many peoples’ everyday lives - because it is. It’s not too sentimental, and it’s not too casual. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s honest. It just Is. I’m gonna maintain that tone soooo good you don’t even fucking know. Oh my god I want to make this so we can show it to you guys. Please give us money.

Shot in Brooklyn we follow Kala from her mess of a room, to the street, to a cafe where she meets up with Kathir. It’s a classic Brooklyn Saturday. You have sex, fight a little with your boyfriend, eat a croissant, and call your mom. These places represent Kala as she exits out of her internal world, to be more honest with people she is desperate to please.

Kala: A gorgeous (I’m only saying that because I’m playing her) Tamil woman in her early twenties. She is trying to make everyone happy, while also trying to figure out what she wants. 

Amma: A mother. She just wants her daughter to be happy and thinks a husband will give her that. 

Nate: He loves Kala. He is learning Tamil for her. He would build a bridge to Lanka for her (Ramanaya reference). He wants her to take the relationship as seriously as he does, and tries not to take it personally when she gives pause to moving forward. 

Kathir: Detached, transparent, and seemingly impervious to the overcomplications that rule Kala’s life. He’s essentially boy Kala, which means he’s not thinking about everything so fucking much. He does what he wants, and he does what he needs to do in order to do what he wants.

Pre-Production: Spring 2026

Production: Mid Summer 2026

Post-Production: Summer / Fall 2026

Festivals & Distribution: Winter 2026-7

Finally, text me that I’m not doing enough. I should be doing more, I respond well to people being mean. 

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• Pledge -  truly any amount will move us closer to bringing this baby to life, no matter how small. This is very much a passion project, but it is important to us to feed our cast and crew more than granola bars and hope. We’re appreciative of whatever you can give and promise it will not be used in vain. 
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