DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Black sheep artist Renu was going to get something right in the family...
Wait, let me backup. I'm Renu Razdan! I once pursued a path of becoming an engineer (a respectable profession in my South Asian community), only to pivot to an acting career. Which is when I met the love of my life.
Life was magical. He proposed.
I got obsessed with planning the wedding.
Because that’s what would make me a fully arrived member of the family.
In the South Asian Community, getting married is often a right of passage of worthy respectable adulthood. A status symbol to say "we as a family made it!".
Sort of like the most expensive venue search for hiding all your family dysfunction.
And if your wedding isn't all that you dreamed of, was it even a real wedding?
How ironic that I married the love of my life and yet found myself crying on the hotel room floor on our wedding night. Things had not been perfect enough.
You see my blueprint for romance was nothing short of a fantasy musical (thank you Disney Animation & Bollywood movies). And while I do believe that Love is a beautiful thing to Celebrate...When the Celebration becomes more important than the Love, It might lead you down a dark path.
This quest for nuptial excellence, newlywed bliss, & instagram likes can leave us depressed & hollow. Enter: A Newlywed Story, my debut short film.
As a storyteller, I’m always inspired by what is beneath the veil of perfection and the pressure women face to live up to it. This film is about the desire for women to chase “perfect” moments” deemed as markers of their success, getting married in particular.
I have found that women in my community feel so much pressure to live up to an iconic presentation of what their happy milestone occasions should be so much so that the desire for this external facing worldview is misaligned with how we internally feel- and that's not ok. We are primed from a young age to be achee bachees (good girls) and the right marriage material hence why this “day” is filled with a sense of accomplishment and self worth.
A NEWLYWED STORY helps remind us all to take the pressure off and celebrate the love in the imperfect moments.
