details
Rating: NONE
Running Time: 105 mins.
Country Of Origin: United States
synopsis
The story of Raj and Nina, first generation Asian Indian immigrant children who have grown up in America, and their aging mother, Anju, who is desperately trying to rationalize the family's emigration to America. Nina is bright, beautiful and emotionally repressed. She rebels against the conservative Hindu values of her mother and detests the Indian custom of arranged marriages, so she exclusively dates white men. Her attitude changes when she meets Ashok, fresh from India, who offers her a new level of emotional intimacy which she's never felt before. Her life is complicated when an old American flame, Sam, reenters her life. Ashok and Sam trap Nina in a cultural tug of war. Raj, Nina's brother is her polar opposite. His problem--he's disenchanted with his love life, but cannot break up the engagement as it would damage his sweet fiancee's reputation. Nina's family can no longer fully adhere to the customs of the country they have left behind, and yet do not fully belong to mainstream America.
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reviews
Source
April 2, 2001
ABCD, a stunning family drama about cultural displacement, is the extraordinary work of writer-producer-director Krutin Patel, who came to America from India in 1974 at the age of eight. His film (the title is an acronym for American-Born Confused Desi) tells the story of Nina (Sheetal Sheth), a young Indian woman living in America who rebels against the Hindu upbringing of her widowed mother, Anju (the great Madhur Jaffrey). Nina sleeps around, and almost exclusively with white men. Her more… Continued