Mira Nair Joins Toronto Platforms Jury

By Pickle August 23, 2018

Toronto International Film Festival has announced that Indian–American director Mira Nair has joined the 2018 Toronto Platform Prize Jury.

The award-winning filmmaker will select the winner of the Toronto Platform Prize along with the previously announced jurors, Hungarian existential master Béla Tarr and acclaimed South Korean director and novelist Lee Chang-dong.

“Mira Nair’s remarkable body of work makes her one of the most interesting and tenacious directors working today,” said TIFF Director & CEO Piers Handling, in a statement.

“From her important documentary work to her most recent award-winning titles, Mira has always shown a vision and passion that make her a perfect fit for this year’s Platform Jury. We are honoured that this September we will have the opportunity to host her and fellow jurors Béla Tarr and Lee Chang-dong.”

The Toronto Platform Prize, an award of $25,000 CAD, will be presented to the best film in the programme’s lineup at the Awards Ceremony on the last day of the Festival. Now in its fourth year, Platform is the Toronto International Film Festival’s juried section that champions risk-taking with a lineup of up to 12 works with high artistic merit and a bold directorial vision.

Mira Nair was born and raised in Rourkela, India, and went on to study at the University of Delhi and Harvard University. Her narrative feature debut, Salaam Bombay! (1988), won the Camera d’Or and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

A resourceful and determined independent filmmaker who casts unknowns alongside Hollywood stars, Nair has directed Mississippi Masala (1991), The Perez Family (1995), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Hysterical Blindness (2002), Vanity Fair (2004), The Namesake (2006), Amelia (2009), and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012). Her most recent film, Queen of Katwe, about a Ugandan girl with an aptitude for chess, stars Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo. Nair’s acclaimed film Monsoon Wedding (2001) was recently brought to the stage as a highly anticipated musical at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where it closed an extended, sold-out run this past summer. Nair will be directing the BBC’s forthcoming adaptation of A Suitable Boy, to be released in 2020.

Nair first attended TIFF (then the Festival of Festivals) in 1988, when Salaam Bombay! screened in Toronto. That year, she also participated in a Festival Industry panel on women in film.