Mira Nair’s `Reluctant Fundamentalist` opens Doha Film Festival

Dubai: Internationally acclaimed director Mira Nair’s new movie based on the 2007 bestseller ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist,’ opened the fourth Doha Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday.

The opening night of the film festival at the Souq Waqif - Doha’s cultural nerve centre - was attended by Mira Nair and ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ author Mohsin Hamid, Gulf News reported. The 55-year-old director said that she chose to adapt the book into a movie, as she was “tired of always seeing the story from one point of view.” “I have always believed that if we do not tell our own stories, no one else will,” the publication quoted her as saying. The ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist’ that has Riz Ahmad and Kate Hudson, along with Shabana Azmi and Om Puri, is about a Pakistani Princeton graduate who becomes torn between his American dream and the call of his homeland. “We discuss two very important forms of fundamentalism — that of the capitalists and that of terrorists,” Nair said. The film is co-funded by the Doha Film Institute, which also owns the festival. “Bringing [the film] to Doha is like a homecoming for me,” Nair said. “They have been with me from day one,” she said. ANI