A Diwali Dilemma: A Direct Inner Conversation about Minority Struggles
Mala tripped over in a company Diwali party, which led to unexpected visits and realizations.

Investigative journalists working for Disclose spent over a year investigating the production chain of the furniture giant which generated a 44.6 billion euros revenue in 2022 and attracts over 5 billion visitors to its stores and website every year. From the boreal forests of Sweden to Brazilian plantations and New Zealand coastlines, they uncovered how IKEA intensively exploits wood around the world, fuels the illegal trafficking of this resource and threatens the last precious European forests. Long overlooked, intensive logging is now sparking outrage and anger among citizens in Poland and the Baltic countries, who are increasingly concerned about the fate of their countries' public forest domains and biodiversity loss. In Romania, where IKEA owns 50,000 hectares of forests, activists are risking their lives mobilizing against the timber mafia. This film tells the expansion of a discreet forest predator, grappling with the limits of the planet's resources.
Mala tripped over in a company Diwali party, which led to unexpected visits and realizations.
As one of the women said in the film, friendship in your teens is “as important as any lover” and it’s clear they lived that philosophy throughout their early adult lives as well.
This film was filled with great plot points. Unfortunately, they all contradicted each other and clashed. Had the premise of Awake been more consistent and accurately portrayed the real world aspect, I think this could have been an extreme success.
If your upbringing was anything like mine, where the TV acted as an additional parent- there are so many new stories and perspectives to explore.
Some people’s first introduction to Mira Nair might be as New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mom. But with her insightful direction of 1991’s Mississippi Masala, Nair shows how much she deserves to be known as an artist. Delivering a nuanced portrait of a romance between a Black man and an Indian woman living in the South, Nair explores the complications each character faces, giving both equal weight.
Malignant is a roller coaster ride of slow-build scares, moments of wonderfully absurd camp, and explorations of autonomy.