My name is Priya Mishra - I am a filmmaker and cultural worker raising money for my next short film, "Colocasia esculenta." The film centers Bhagwati- an aspiring artist who, while trying to micro-dose success, accidentally buys a haunted taro plant from her reviled job at the local pumpkin patch.

This is a story about how learning to love your most hated, neglected, and berated parts will liberate you from the heavy chains of others’ expectations, and allow you to live freely. The cycles of perfectionism, fear, and shame are breakable. You have the power to heal yourself.

PLOT SUMMARY:

The trouble begins when Bhagwati brings home an Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta) from her job at the pumpkin patch. She has wanted it for years, after once watching a wealthy and beautiful girl buy one. Bhagwati was bred for financial success, but is disappointing her immigrant family to pursue a career as an artist. That night, Bhagwati is plagued by nightmares, and when she wakes, a Child, whom no one else can see, has appeared on her bed.

As Bhagwati goes through the day, working a tiring and thankless job with abrasive customers, failing to connect with her white co-workers, and hating herself for both, her world begins to fill with a smoky miasma. When she and Child get home, Bhagwati realizes the smoke is emanating from her beloved Colocasia, emblematic of everything she’s thought she wanted, or, at least what she thought she was supposed to want…

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

Colocasia esculenta is a magical-realist psychological thriller moonlighting as a personal documentary, based on a real day I had while stuck in retail-hell at my local pumpkin patch in Long Island, pursuing a film career after being the “perfect daughter” my whole life.

The weight of the grief, depression, and cultural expectations that came with being an imperfect child of immigrants was devastating. So many years later, I still remember the intense loneliness and hopelessness I felt.

I am making this film because I want to provide for others the kind of story I needed then-- one that conveys the raw, bizarre, deeply internal, and quietly terrifying reality of trauma, and sends the message that you have the power to heal yourself even when everything seems to be falling apart.

This is a love letter to wayward children, like me, who are pursuing their dreams and on the verge of giving up. There is always hope, and when you learn what it means to accept yourself, there will always be an endless supply of love.

COLOCASIA ESCULENTA?

The Colocasia esculenta, a trendy houseplant here, but a cheap root vegetable in my parents’ homeland, perfectly captures what this film is about: cultural displacement, trauma, and the deep ache that comes with trying to “belong” when your environment is not made to nurture you. We can try to buy healing or assimilation, but that often just exacerbates the pain of the buried things within that cry for us. And those parts are often ones we try to ignore.

This film uses magical realism to portray a psychological framework called Internal Family Systems (IFS), where people are understood as multi-minded beings made of “parts”, which have their own agendas and thought processes. Magical realism lends itself greatly to showing the haunting, suffocating nature of self-hatred, and the ways it can affect your very being.

The Child part in the film represents Bhagwati's innocence, curiosity, and unmet needs. But Cigarette Girl is her beautiful, brutal, and cruel survival mechanism. Their conflict ultimately becomes a visual, emotional battle for the Bhagwati’s life- one that may be familiar to many.

URGENT & NEEDED

We are currently in a mental health crisis. So many of us, especially those in BIPOC, queer, and immigrant communities, are suffering silently. Children of immigrants are more likely to struggle with depression and anxiety than their non-immigrant counterparts (one study posits that this may even be double), but much less likely to receive support.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for Asian-American youth ages 20-24. And yet the stories that speak to our pain with nuance, love, and specificity are rare and unavailable, and the topic remains taboo in both our communities and households.

The world is in chaos, but this film means so much to us. We have applied to grants and production companies, adjusted the length and the number of characters. We believe in this project and all it has to offer with our whole hearts. With your support, we can bring it into this world and make it a reality, a creation born from all of our beliefs and efforts, without anymore waiting and hoping, so it can work to support others.