The MisEducation of Bindu by filmmaker Prarthana Mohan. The film is a winner of the Seed & Spark Hometown Hero contest, securing Mark & Jay Duplass as Executive Producers.
The Miseducation of Bindu’s World Premiere will be at the Mill Valley Film Festival, immediately followed by the film’s hometown premiere at the Heartland Film Festival.
The film follows Bindu (Megan Suri, THE BRINK) on what she hopes to be her last day of public school. After being brought to America by her mother (Priyanka Bose, LION), she struggles to fit in at school and is targeted by the bullies. With the help of her friend Peter (Philip Labes, GLOW), she ventures through the day trying to earn enough money from her classmates, to take the Spanish Proficiency exam the final credit she needs to test out of school. She also struggles with her mother’s new relationship with Bill (David Arquette, SCREAM), as he tries to help her navigate boys, and high school in America.
The MisEducation of Bindu also features music from Prarthana’s grandfather, famed Indian composer M.S. Viswanathan, popularly known as Mellisai Mannar.
Mill Valley Film Festival Screenings World Premiere: 10/9/19 – 8:45pm @ Lark Theatre 10/10/19 – 9:00pm @ Century LarkSpur 3. Click here for tickets.
Heartland Film Festival Screenings Hometown Premiere: 10/12/19 – 7:30pm @ AMC Traders Point Theatre 10/18/19 – 5:30pm @ DeBoest Lecture Hall at Newfields Click here for tickets.
Filmmakers’ Statement
We wrote it because we were sick of them. You know, “Coming of Age” stories featuring guys and their all too familiar problems in high school. In the end, they have a happy ending where the protagonist learns to deal with love, friendship, and conquering puberty!
…All that heartwarming stuff.
But, that’s not how we grew up. For both of us women, we didn’t see any protagonists who went through puberty like we did—all the girls in Film and TV seemed to wake up one day beautiful and perfect. Not us. Where was the agony? The terribly awkward?
There were hardly any characters that spoke like us, looked like us, and had experiences that resonated with us. Characters who could let us know we weren’t alone. And that’s what united us to create The Miseducation of Bindu.
While we could identify with those painfully hard years of high school, Prarthana provided conflicting realities of being a young girl growing up in a conservative family from India.
Experiences of a girl caught, not only between girlhood and womanhood but a girl with a foot in India’s traditional past and the promise of global future where she can blend in to be whomever she wants to be. From that self-conscious discomfort, we met and fell in love with our painfully bright, awkward heroine: Bindu, a 15-year-old Indian girl.
We loved Bindu for the pureness of her emotions and feared for her as she approached the hallowed halls of public high school, completely unprepared for what came next. We united our voices and wrote the coming-of-age yearning inside of us.
The Miseducation of Bindu was inspired by A Girl’s Own Story and Welcome to the Dollhouse because they each have a voice to show unflinching brutal awkwardness of young women coping with sexuality, and Napoleon Dynamite because of the film’s ability to scrutinize the numerous bizarre facets of life—and laugh at the truth of it.
–Prarthana Mohan (Director and Co-Writer)
& Kay Tuxford (Co-Writer)
Prarthana Mohan
Born and raised in Chennai, India, Prarthana Mohan has always been interested in the arts. Hailing from a film family, her grandfather’s (renowned composer M.S. Viswanathan) stories about the film industry ignited her imagination. In college, Prarthana pursued Visual Communication and her documentary, HUSH, won the state award for best film.
Prarthana completed her MFA in Film Production with an emphasis in Directing at Chapman University in California.
Prarthana was the recipient of the Leo Freedman Award for excellence in visual storytelling. Her thesis film TURN AROUND showcased at film festivals, including Seoul International Film Festival, Portland Women’s Film Festival, and Davis Film Festival.
An early short film version of THE MISEDUCATION OF BINDU screened at multiple festivals and the feature script won 2nd Place at Cynosure Screenwriting Competition and was a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships.
THE MISEDUCATION OF BINDU is her first feature film.