Mississippi Masala
Encyclopedia
Mississippi Masala is a romantic
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...

 drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 film directed by Mira Nair
Mira Nair
Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...

, based upon a screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala
Sooni Taraporevala
Sooni Taraporevala is an internationally acclaimed screenwriter and photographer, currently based in India. She is best known as the screenwriter of Mississippi Masala, The Namesake and Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay , all directed by Mira Nair.She directed her first feature film, based on a...

, starring Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr...

, Sarita Choudhury
Sarita Choudhury
Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury is an English actress.-Biography:Choudhury was born in Blackheath, London, England, of half Bengali-Indian and half English descent. Her parents, Prabhas Chandra Choudhury, a scientist, and Julia Patricia Spring, married in 1964 in Lucea, Jamaica...

, and Roshan Seth
Roshan Seth
Roshan Seth is an Indian-born British actor, who appears mainly in British and American films. He is known for his critically acclaimed performances in the films Gandhi, Mississippi Masala, Not Without My Daughter, My Beautiful Laundrette, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Such a Long...

. Set primarily in rural Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

, the film explores interracial romance between African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s and Indian American
Indian American
Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestral roots lie in India. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Indigenous peoples of the Americas who are commonly referred to as American Indians.-The term: Indian:...

s in the United States.

It was released in the U.S. on 5 February 1992, after being released in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 on 18 September 1991 and in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 on 17 January 1992. The film grossed $7,310,000 million USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

 at the box office.

Plot

A third-generation Ugandan Indian
Indians in Uganda
There are currently over 12,000 people of Indian origin living in Uganda, but this is a far cry from their heyday. In the late 1890s, over 30,000 Indians, mostly Sikhs, were brought on 3 year contracts to build the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to Kisumu by 1901, and to Kampala by 1931. Some died,...

 family residing in Kampala
Kampala
Kampala is the largest city and capital of Uganda. The city is divided into five boroughs that oversee local planning: Kampala Central Division, Kawempe Division, Makindye Division, Nakawa Division and Lubaga Division. The city is coterminous with Kampala District.-History: of Buganda, had chosen...

, is expelled from the country
Expulsion of Asians in Uganda in 1972
On 4 August 1972, the then President of Uganda, Idi Amin, ordered the expulsion of his country's Indian minority, giving them 90 days to leave Uganda...

 in 1972 by the Idi Amin
Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...

 regime. The father, Jay (Roshan Seth
Roshan Seth
Roshan Seth is an Indian-born British actor, who appears mainly in British and American films. He is known for his critically acclaimed performances in the films Gandhi, Mississippi Masala, Not Without My Daughter, My Beautiful Laundrette, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Such a Long...

) moves with wife, Kinnu (Sharmila Tagore
Sharmila Tagore
Sharmila Tagore is an Indian film actress. She has won National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards for her performances.She has led the Indian Film Censor Board from October 2004 till March 2011...

) and daughter, Mina (Sarita Choudhury
Sarita Choudhury
Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury is an English actress.-Biography:Choudhury was born in Blackheath, London, England, of half Bengali-Indian and half English descent. Her parents, Prabhas Chandra Choudhury, a scientist, and Julia Patricia Spring, married in 1964 in Lucea, Jamaica...

) to Greenwood
Greenwood, Mississippi
Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta approximately 96 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi, and 130 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The population was 15,205 at the 2010 census. It is the...

, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

 to live with family members who own a chain of motels there. Kinnu obtains work in a liquor store.

In 1990, 24-year-old Mina, who cleans at Anil's (Ranjit Chowdhry
Ranjit Chowdhry
Ranjit Chowdhry is an actor of Indian descent, with around forty movies and television performances to his credit, besides acting in theatre as well. Varied spellings of his names have been used in credits...

) family's motel (the Monte Cristo), falls in love with Demetrius (Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr...

), a local African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 self-employed carpet cleaner. The respective families erupt in turmoil after the pair are discovered and confronted by members of the Indian family during a clandestine weekend of pleasure in Biloxi
Biloxi, Mississippi
Biloxi is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, in the United States. The 2010 census recorded the population as 44,054. Along with Gulfport, Biloxi is a county seat of Harrison County....

.

Ultimately, the two families cannot come to terms with the interracial pair, who flee the state together in Demetrius' van. After a brief return to Kampala to attend a court proceeding on the disposition of his confiscated Ugandan house, Jay relinquishes his long-nurtured dream of returning to Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

, the place he considered home.

Production

The script was written in Brooklyn, New York after extensive research by Nair, Taraporevala, and their team in Mississippi and Uganda. While doing research in Mississippi, Nair met a carpet cleaner named Demetrius and decided to model the main character after him. Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

 was originally cast in the role of Mina's father, but he eventually withdrew from the project, prompting the original backers of the film to pull out as well. She was able to gain new funding after Denzel Washington was chosen for the role of Demetrius. She later mentioned she faced substantial pressure from potential backers to select white leads rather than Indians or African Americans. The Mississippi-based scenes were filmed in Mississippi, in the towns of Greenwood
Greenwood, Mississippi
Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta approximately 96 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi, and 130 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The population was 15,205 at the 2010 census. It is the...

, Grenada
Grenada, Mississippi
Grenada is a city in Grenada County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,879 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Grenada County.-History:...

, Biloxi, and Ocean Springs
Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Ocean Springs is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States, about east of Biloxi. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,225 at the 2000 census...

. The Uganda scenes were filmed in Kampala, Uganda, including in Nair's home.

Cast

  • Denzel Washington
    Denzel Washington
    Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr...

     - Demetrius Williams
  • Sarita Choudhury
    Sarita Choudhury
    Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury is an English actress.-Biography:Choudhury was born in Blackheath, London, England, of half Bengali-Indian and half English descent. Her parents, Prabhas Chandra Choudhury, a scientist, and Julia Patricia Spring, married in 1964 in Lucea, Jamaica...

     - Mina
  • Roshan Seth
    Roshan Seth
    Roshan Seth is an Indian-born British actor, who appears mainly in British and American films. He is known for his critically acclaimed performances in the films Gandhi, Mississippi Masala, Not Without My Daughter, My Beautiful Laundrette, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Such a Long...

     - Jay
  • Sharmila Tagore
    Sharmila Tagore
    Sharmila Tagore is an Indian film actress. She has won National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards for her performances.She has led the Indian Film Censor Board from October 2004 till March 2011...

     - Kinnu
  • Charles S. Dutton
    Charles S. Dutton
    Charles Stanley Dutton is an American stage, film, and television actor and director. He is perhaps best known for his roles as "Fortune" in the film Rudy and "Dillon" in Alien 3...

     - Tyrone Williams
  • Joe Seneca
    Joe Seneca
    Joe Seneca was an American film and television actor who had a lengthy Hollywood career, portraying bit parts in many major films and television sitcoms spanning from the 1970s to the 1990s....

     - Williben Williams
  • Ranjit Chowdhry
    Ranjit Chowdhry
    Ranjit Chowdhry is an actor of Indian descent, with around forty movies and television performances to his credit, besides acting in theatre as well. Varied spellings of his names have been used in credits...

     - Anil
  • Joseph Olita
    Joseph Olita
    Joseph Olita is a Kenyan actor who portrayed Idi Amin in the films Rise and Fall of Idi Amin and Mississippi Masala . He also played 1st Policeman in Sheena .-External links:...

     - Idi Amin
    Idi Amin
    Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...

  • Mohan Gokhale
    Mohan Gokhale
    Mohan Gokhale was an Indian film, television and theater actor who has worked in art films such as Sparsh, Bhavni Bhavai and Mirch Masala. He became popular because of his role in the Doordarshan television serial Mr. Yogi...

     - Pontiac
  • Mohan Agashe
    Mohan Agashe
    Mohan Agashe is an Indian theatre and film actor. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1996.-Biography:...

     - Kanti Napkin
  • Tico Wells
    Tico Wells
    Tico Wells is an African-American actor, best known for his role as Choirboy in the 1991 film, The Five Heartbeats.. He has also appeared on The Cosby Show, 227, Hallmark movies and Beverly Hills, 90210. He was Tim in the movie, The Wishlist, and played Dexter Williams, the younger brother of...

     - Dexter Williams
  • Yvette Hawkins - Aunt Rose
  • Anjan Srivastav
    Anjan Srivastav
    Anjan Srivatsav is an Indian film, television and stage actor, associated with Indian People's Theatre Association in Mumbai of which he remained Vice-President for several years...

     - Jammubhai (as Anjan Srivastava)
  • Mira Nair
    Mira Nair
    Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...

     - Gossip 1
  • Rajika Puri - Gossip 2
  • Richard Crick - Hotel Customer
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