CAST

Nandita Chandra, Urmi

Nandita Chandra Hailed by critics as “wickedly funny” and “all verve and attitude”, Nandita Chandra’s multiple award-winning performance of the irresistible Stella in I-Pod is an off Broadway favourite.
Bob Krakower attributes Chandra’s award-winning performances to “spontaneity that actors dream of...”.
 Chris Shinn says, “Nandita’s comic ability – agile, supremely intelligent, with depths of pain peeking out from below a scathing surface – is extraordinary…has true star quality”.
 TV credits include I Love You…But I Lied (LMN), The Leftovers (HBO), Taxi Brooklyn (NBC), White Collar (USA), Curb Appeal (HGTV).

Apart from her involvement in the arts, Nandita is dedicated to global philantrophy. She works with PPES, Humanity Without Borders supporting and promoting women's rights, education for change and animal rights with Red Paws Rescue, Frendioces and The Humane Society of US.
Nandita is a proud graduate of Lady Sri Ram College and The New School for Drama.  She has participated in readings and master classes at The LAByrinth Theatre, MCC Theatre, Lark Theatre amongst others.  She currently resides in New York.

Yacine Djoumbaye, Babacar

Yacine is an experienced actor who was the lead in the film Jungle that premiered at Sundance film festival earlier this year. He is a versatile actor who can portray one of the first black pilots in a documentary and an angry gangster in Oh Black Jesus. Yacine studied under Mary Boyer at MTB Studio.

Yacine grew up in West Africa and is fluent in four languages. He is a loving husband and father who enjoys playing soccer with his children. Yacine is looking forward to playing lead on the next academy award winning series!

Arash Mokhtar, Behrouz

Born in Tehran, Iran, Arash Mokhtar was raised primarily in Washington D.C. He spent many years traveling and working throughout the U.S. and Europe as an exhibiting visual artist before settling in New York City, committing himself to a life as an actor on stage and screen.
Selected credits: THEATER (NYC): Berenger, Rhinoceros; Buckingham, Richard III; Coriolanus, Coriolanus; Truffaldino, The Servant of Two Masters; Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband; Joe Cooper, Killer Joe; Daniel Woolf, Closer; Eddie, Hurlyburly.
TV: Madam Secretary, Veep, Forever, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Believe, Zero Hour, Elementary, Person of Interest, Political Animals, NYC 2-2.  He's had lead and supporting roles in several independent films, including the latest short, Day 39, which was a finalist for the 2015 Student Academy Awards. It won the
Gold Circle Caucus Award in Los Angeles for Best Student Film.  He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

Sherz Aletaha, Azin

Sherz (sounds like more than one Cher) is a singer/actor/mover who loves a good dance party. Originally from Newport Beach, California, she is currently living in New York City and was recently in the hit Off Broadway show Disaster written by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick with direction by Plotnick and choreography by Denis Jones. Other NY credits include Spring Alive (Dixon Place, cast album available), Beyond The iChatter (Ars Nova), and numerous concerts and readings. Sherz geeked out big time singing aboard Rosie O'Donnell's Rfamily cruise alongside fancy Broadway folks, and she performed regionally in How To Succeed..., Man of La Mancha, Gypsy, and Moon Over Buffalo.  She also played Lauren in the award winning web series Wing Women (www.wingwomenseries.com).

Tjasa Ferme, Ilona

Tjasa Ferme is a versatile theater and film actress whose natural talents for the live arts manifested very early on. Born and raised in Slovenia (the country that gave the world the legendary avant-garde band Laibach and the maverick philosopher Slavoj Žižek), she started performing almost as soon as she could walk. A daughter of a rock musician, she often joined her father on stage as a band mascot, dancing and playing a tambourine.

Tjasa was accepted to the Master Program in performance at the prestigious National Acting Academy (AGRFT). In 2005-06, she was awarded the Sever’s Prize for classical theater roles, and in 2006, a Vesna Award (the Slovenian equivalent of an Oscar.)
Her career quickly took an international turn: she appeared in film and theater projects produced in Germany, Italy, Brazil and France.

Tjasa‘s New York theater credits include the hit sex comedy Cocktales: Confessions of a Nymphomaniac (written and performed by Tjasa Ferme, directed by Kira Simring); it premiered at NYC’s The Abingdon Theatre. Her writing for Cocktales
was described by NYC critics as “nothing short of brilliant.” The show ran for several weeks to sold-out houses and was later produced in Miami and shown as part of Art Basel. She also directed and starred in a short film Ophelia’s Flip, which premiered at
Cannes Film Festival in 2012. Her recent appearance in Before God Was Invented was praised by the nytheatre.com reviewer as “a standout performance.”
 

Peter Goitom, Dawit

Peter Goitom is an actor, singer, and comedian. He was recently in MTV Film’s Girl Code. Stage credits include Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Othello in Othello, Feste in Twelfth Night, Turkel in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He was a embmer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Fundamentally Sound Men’s A Cappella group, lead singer in the band The Temp, and has performed sketches at UCB Chelsea’s Liquid Courage.

Pascale Piquion, Madha

Storm Gunraj, Sam

CREW

Arthur Vincie, Writer, Director

Arthur recently wrote and directed the sci-fi feature Found In Time.  The film was released on Amazon and other VOD channels by Green Apple Entertainment.  It went to 26 festivals, winning Best Feature at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, and Best Sci-Fi Feature awards at Shriekfest, Intendence, Shockerfest, ZedFest, and Phoenix Comic-Con.  

Focal Press just published his non-fiction book on preproduction, Preparing For Takeoff: Preproduction for the Independent Filmmaker.  Caleb's Door, his first feature, is available on DVD and VOD.  

Arthur's shorts have screened at festivals and art venues in the US and in Europe.  He's also line produced/production managed 13 features, including Helena From The Wedding; Goodbye Baby; The Toe Tactic; and Racing Daylight, starring David Strathairn and Melissa Leo.  These films screened at the Tribeca, Slamdance, Nantucket, SXSW, Rome, Woodstock, and other film festivals, and have gone on to theatrical, DVD and cable distribution.  He's also line produced pilots, industrials, music videos, and shorts. 

Prior to line producing, Arthur worked in just about every department, for ABC, NBC, BBC America, MSNBC, the Knitting Factory, and various independent production companies.  He holds a B.F.A. from NYU.

Ben Wolf, Cinematographer, Co-Producer

Ben’s experience spans several continents, genres, and styles.  He recently shot the musical Life of an Actress (dir. Paul Chau) as well as a six-hour road movie on all the towns in the U.S. called ‘Amsterdam,’ Amsterdam Stories USA (dirs: Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck).  The film won awards in Portugal and Serbia and was televised in several European countries. Deceptive Practice (dirs: Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein), a film on the magician Ricky Jay, screened throughout the U.S. via distributor Kino Lorber. Food Chains (dir. Sanjay Rawal) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and Invitation to Dance (dir. Christian von Tippelskirch and Simi Linton) premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.  He also recently lensed Arthur Vincie’s lo-fi sci-fi film Found In Time, Shoja Azari’s Venice Biennale entry The King of Black and Marc Leland’s werewolf film She-Wolf Rising.  

Ben’s other credits include Gold Mountain (Student Academy Award, Best Cinematography), Lustre starring Victor Argo, The Young Girl and The Monsoon starring Terry Kinney and Diane Venora, Requiem for Kosova (official selection at over forty film festivals around the globe, and winner of several awards). Ben has shot in Sarajevo, China, India, and, most recently, in Malaysia and East Timor.

Ben also teaches cinematography at DocNomads in Belgium, Montclair State University and has taught lighting seminars at SVA, Brooklyn College, Wright State University, and SACAC in Delhi.

Daria Sommers, Co-Producer

Daria Sommers is a New York-based filmmaker whose work includes both documentaries and narrative fiction. She is the co-director and co-producer of Lioness, winner of Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award at the Full Frame Film Festival in 2008 and which was broadcast nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens. Some of Daria's previous films include Eastern Spirit Western World, which was nationally broadcast by PBS, BBC, CBC, French and Chinese Television and premiered at the Smithsonian Institution, as well as the narrative work Ready To Burn, recipient of the Panavision New Director's Award.

She has received awards from the NEH, the NEA, The John Whitney Payson Fund, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Fledgling Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Rockefeller Family & Associates, The Open Society and NYSCA. She has been an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony and Mass MoCA and served on the Metropolitan Museum's Program for Art on Film.

Her work has screened at museums across the country including the Smithsonian's Sackler Galleries, the Museum for Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Arts Club, and the Honolulu Museum of Art as well as film festivals internationally including Tribeca, Full Frame, Human Rights Watch/London,Independent Film Festival of Boston, Jihalava in the Czech Republic and the Seven Island International Film Festival in India.

She recently served as a judge for the United Nation's 1 in 7 Billion film competition. Daria is a graduate of Oberlin College and co-founder of Room 11 Productions

Debarati Biswas, Co-Producer

Debarati is currently pursuing her PhD in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and teaches literature and literary theory courses at Hunter College.  Her dissertation profiles focuses on African American authors writing between 1945-1975, specifically those whose work has not been adequately theoretically examined.  Using the lenses of poststructuralist, Marxist historical, and queer theory, she analyzes the writers' nuanced, complex depictions of black masculinities.  She hails from Kolkata, India, where she completed her undergraduate studies.