“Coming Out With the Help of a Time Machine” directed by Naman Gupta is a film about truth, consequences and acceptance.
When coming out to his traditional Indian parents, Sid, played by Karan Soni (“Deadpool”, “Four Samosas“) uses his time machine to reset the day in an attempt to make sure everything goes perfectly. Coming out, especially in South Asian culture, is never easy. According to an interview, screenwriters Naman Gupta and Janki Parekh said they came up with the idea after watching a YouTube video of a same-sex couple describing their experience of coming out to their Indian parents.
“It was honest, funny, and emotional,” says Gupta of the video. “My writing partner, Janki, had shared the video with me with a note saying ‘we should do a coming-out story.’ However, I did not want to do just another coming-out story. So we sat on it, while we worked on other fun projects. Then one day, as I was scribbling a time loop scene set in a diner and it hit me.”
The script was the first-place winner at Tasveer’s Netflix-supported Film Fund competition where the prize was initial seed money to help produce the short film. From there the idea was pitched to Karan Soni who jumped on board to play the lead role of Sid. Sangeeta Agrawal and Raghuram Shetty were also tapped to play Sid’s traditional Indian parents, Poonam and Rakesh. The short script attracted the attention of Nav Gupta (co-executive producer on Netflix’s Code 8) and Neetu Sharma Gupta, along with James Orfanos, Vijaykumar Mirchandani and Rahul Brahmbhatt to help produce.
“Coming Out With the Help of a Time Machine” has had quite the festival run, screening at Tribeca, DFW South Asian Film Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival and Screen Power, to name a few, where the film has garnered their fair share of awards such as Best LGBTQ Short Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay, capturing the hearts of film goers nationwide.
The film will be screening at Chicago South Asian Film Festival on September 24th, 2022.
