An intergenerational story of Monika, a Sikh-Canadian who must come to terms with a tragedy that she has kept secret from her two teenage daughters as she struggles to maintain her relationship with them. In the hopes of setting things right, she sends Alia, her calorie-obsessed 13-year-old, and her 17-year-old Simi, to stay with relatives in Amritsar for the summer, and to give her time to take on her own demons. Monika has been haunted by memories of her mother who was killed in the 1985 Air India bombing when she was a teenager. When Monika finally joins her daughters in India, she receives a cold welcome from the girls who feel abandoned by her. Based on a real life tragedy, CALORIE follows a family living under the weight of a traumatic past while grappling to find their way back home to one another.
With a background in photography, Montreal-based Eisha Marjara is a TIFF Studio alumni. She first drew attention with the witty and satirical The Incredible Shrinking Woman. But it was her feature NFB docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen (2000) that established her as a groundbreaking filmmaker. The film received the Critic’s Choice Award at the Locarno Film Festival and the Jury Prize at the München Dokumentarfilm Festival. It has been described as “one of the most auspicious film debuts on the Canadian scene.” Both The Tourist (2006) and House for Sale (2012) were nominated had extensive recognition. Venus (2017), her transgender feature drama, received multiple awards at various festivals. More recently, she won the Betty Youson Award for the Best Canadian Short Documentary at Hot Docs. Calorie is her second fiction feature.
Compass Productions inc.
