Last year, I was at the Cannes Film Festival shopping my script "Dear Brother" to producers at the Maison Des Scenaristes pitch competition. This year, I'm planning a live reading of the screenplay in NYC on 6/11, for a small audience, to be followed by a talk back moderated by religious scholar, and Barnard College faculty member, Hussein Rashid, Ph.D., a thought leader on Islam. Come out, support and engage! Tickets are FREE

Inspired by true events, Dear Brother is the fictional story of a Pakistani-American boxer who fights for his freedom after he's ensnared in an FBI counter-terrorism sting operation. Blending elements of the Denzel Washington classic, "The Hurricane" with Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" franchise, Dear Brother is the boxing epic reflective of our times.

The goal of the evening is to spark dialogue around the issues of how Islamophobia pervades the American law enforcement and criminal justice systems, and provide an opportunity for the writer to receive feedback for future development.

I just finished casting the reading with these amazing actors below:

Anish Roy

Hannah McGovern Gross

Rishi Mutalik

Alec Bandzes

Al Nazemian & Adeola Role

Erik LaPointe & Sunny Choi

Rahoul Roy & Ishani Das

Nitin Madan & Nikki Chawla

If you are interested in the background research that inspired the elements of the story, I’ve included links to articles and a Ted talk by journalist Will Potter below:

The Sting: How the FBI Created a Terrorist, by Trevor Aaronson, The Intercept, March 16, 2015
The United States Wants the World to Forget These Prisoners, by Molly Crabapple, Creative Time Reports, July 21, 2014
Yassin at Ray Brook FCI, by Yassin Aref, Excerpts from a Letter from Yassin Aref, a prisoner at the Terre Haute Federal Prison’s CMU unit, to Carl Strock of the Schnectady Daily Gazette, September 10, 2007
The Secret U.S. Prisons You’ve Never Heard Of, by Will Potter, TED Fellow Retreat 2015 - Stream the Video Below.

Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated -- even preventing them from hugging their children.

If you've known me at all for the past four years or so, you have, at one point or another asked me what I'm working on and, if I held your attention long enough, I eventually got to the part where I described a screenplay that I've poured most of my non-acting free time into- mind, body and soul, titled Dear Brother.

For those that are unfamiliar, the logline: An English born Pakistani boxer, Saleem, fights for his freedom after being wrongfully convicted of planning terrorism.

The script tallied a couple wins at competitions/festivals, but it needed some more work to really hit all the notes that a powerful story like this ought to. Well, I've been plugging away at it and luckily, along the way, I met a seasoned and well accomplished screenwriter/Sundance-alum, who believes in the story and has graciously guided me through the most recent round of revisions. Deep breaths...I am thrilled about this rewrite.

SO, what better time than now to screen a 3 minute short film adapted from Dear Brother !? I shot this film in response to a competition that a London-based theatre company named Headlong Theatre organized in honor of the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001. When I found out about the competition, I had exactly three weeks to put the film together. That meant writing it, pre-production (i.e. casting, location scouting, etc.), shooting, and post, condensed into a three-week span, squeezed in between work and other life necessities like food, air and water. Favors were called in and graciously answered (notably, my brothers; Abhijeet for coming up from New Jersey in spite of the flu, to lend his editing expertise, and Samarjeet for remotely scoring the opening music).

In the end, we ended up with this short that you can view on my website OR you can come watch it on the BIG(ger) screen on Saturday, April 19th, when it screens as a part of Katra's monthly film series alongside some stellar films including, one starring Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston....!? Yes, I'm not burnin BLUE ICE over here. That's the honest to Jah #TROOF. So please come out and watch, support, mingle. Tix available here.

Hope to see you all there! If not, you will probably miss out taking pictures with me like this classic one with the cast of Lily In the Grinder which screened on April 1st. I clearly thought I had to kneel like it was the JV baseball team photo. Go Cougars! (I was next to a flight of stairs OK!?)

@bkwable

Live Presentation of my award-winning screenplay "Dear Brother" in NYC on June 11!

New York premiere of Dear Brother short!