Flmmaker magazine: "25 New Faces of Independent Film"

Interesting list from an article in Filmmaker magazine: "25 New Faces of Independent Film." The list represents a fascinating cross-section of filmmakers with extremely varied backgrounds, interests, and storytelling points-of-view. And you might even recognize one talent: Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Here's his story. The others are equally interesting, well worth the read.

Aasif Mandvi

You know him best as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart‘s senior Middle East correspondent, but there‘s more to Aasif Mandvi than a quick delivery and well-tailored suit. The comedian and character actor is now in production on the indie film 7 to the Palace, which he co-wrote and stars in.

Having acted since he was a kid in Bradford, England, Mandvi (who was born in Bombay, India) and his parents moved to Tampa, Fla., when he was a teen. He earned a theater scholarship to the University of South Florida and later moved to New York City where he honed his chops off-Broadway before breaking through with an acclaimed one-man show, Sakina‘s Restaurant, in 1998, which won an Obie award. “That changed things for me,” he says of the show. “It let me go back and forth from L.A. and New York doing stuff on TV and film,” he says. “I‘m fortunate that my career has progressed in a nice rise.”

With credits including Jericho, Sex and the City, Analyze This, The Sopranos and Freedomland, most of the time Mandvi was typecast as an Indian doctor. “It‘s ironic, my mom wanted me to be a doctor,” he jokes. But now as the fresh face of fake news Mandvi has been given opportunities to develop his own ideas.

He‘s in the works on a pilot at Comedy Central in addition to 7 to the Palace, a comedy loosely based on Sakina‘s Restaurant. Co-written with former Daily Show writer Jonathan Bines and directed by David Kaplan (Year of the Fish), Mandvi plays Samir, an Indian cook who must end his aspirations of being a French chef to reluctantly run his father‘s Indian restaurant in Jackson Heights. “For me it‘s [about] the image of manhood in Western culture from the perspective of an immigrant,” he explains. Struggling to find financing for more than seven years, Mandvi says The Daily Show, which he‘s been a correspondent on since 2006, certainly helped get the project off the ground. “Everyone in Hollywood watches it,” he adds.

Mandvi will star next in the Ricky Gervais comedy Ghost Town (yes, as a doctor) and The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, but he‘s trying not to stay in one particular genre. “I go back and forth from comedy to drama,” he says. “I‘m never in one camp too long. The Daily Show is like a huge comedy camp and hopefully I‘m a better writer and actor because of it.” And hopefully less doctor roles now? “Exactly. But now everyone wants me to play a journalist.” — Jason Guerrasio