1497 Mentor Lab Announces Finalists; Directors Mira Nair, Geeta Malik, And Minhal Baig To Contribute Mentorship

deadline.com:

1497 has selected three Mentees for their Features Lab. The Lab’s first year was held virtually, and the second year was hybrid, held virtually and in-person.

For its third year, 1497 is conducting the Lab as an in-person, immersive, artistic retreat in Malibu, California, during which each Mentee will be paired with a pod of four Mentors from whom they will receive script feedback and career guidance.

Mentees will also work with filmmaker and veteran script consultant Adrienne Weiss to further develop their scripts, with a particular emphasis on the emotional journey of their stories. “We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: we started the 1497 Features Lab to empower writers in the South Asian diaspora to tell whatever stories they want to tell, regardless of the societal, industry, or stereotypical expectations that so often confine writers in our community to certain genres and cultural storylines,” Ahmed, Khan, and Shah said in a joint statement. “All the Finalists met this challenge, so it wasn’t an easy decision for us and our Selection Committee to make.

We’re so excited to support our newest Mentees and see how their stories continue to move the needle for South Asian representation on screen.” This year’s Mentor Pods include Oscar and BAFTA nominated Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake, Mississippi Masala), recipient of the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship Geeta Malick (India Sweets and Spices, Abbott Elementary), and Sundance favorite Minhal Baig (Hala, Ramy), as well as Mohammed Ali (Authentic), Uzma Hasan (Little House Productions), Raj Raghavan (ColorCreative), Kishori Rajan (Random Acts of Flyness), Priya Satiani (Entertainment 360), Rabia Sultana (Sultana