It's not often that we get a window into the future of film.
But right now, the prospects look bright.
NYU freshman, Teja Mettu, is an upcoming filmmaker of our new generation. Hopeful and ambitious, his dedication to his craft has flung him into high-speed junctures of a lifetime, including award winning short films and honourable mentions at our favorite film festivals. But the best part is he’s just getting started.
With the assemblance of inspiration from the directorial work of Donald Glover and Ramy Youssef, the Indian-American experience, and the monomaniacal brain chemistry of an academic, Teja has cooked the perfect hodgepodge, coining the genre ‘Indo-Surreal Satire.’
His recent short film, American Ball Game, co-written alongside Krish Mysoor, is a model example of it.
The short film follows Dhanush, an Indian in his pursuit of assimilating into American culture. Using his own parents’ experiences as immigrants, Teja utilises both satire and surrealism to cleverly present the telling of a generational struggle within his community.
With no more than four hours of sleep and a Celsius in hand, his indisputable hustle is what leaves us most impressed.
Mettu only has two years of work under his belt and has somehow managed to build an extensive resume in such little time, with work as a DP, director, writer, and cinematographer for commercials, music videos, and short films. And even though we can’t reveal his top-secret projects that have yet to come, we know they’re even bigger and better than before.
What could be a better way to hear about ‘American Ball Game’ than through Teja Mettu himself?
“I think the big thing about me is I want to explore the genre of surrealism but use it to convey Indian experiences in the same way that the likes of Donald Glover and Boots Riley use surrealist elements and surrealist storytelling to convey the Black experience. And to me that’s always been an interesting medium. So, they’ve been one of my biggest points of inspiration.
But when it came to making American Ball Game, it was really just taking stories from my Dad. There were a couple of scenes in there that were quite literally pulled from my Dad’s experiences when he came to America. So that was the initial spark. There was a lot I took away from the project. We shot the whole thing in a month. It was for South by Southwest.
When South by Southwest announced last year that there wasn’t going to be a high school category for the first time, I was a senior and lowkey devastated. I’d only been in film for two years; I started film in junior year of high-school but I was still a beginner. Senior year was the time I was going to make something and submit it to SXSW. But then they removed their high-school category... so I just did it anyways. I wanted to see if I could make it into the "legitimate shorts category” at SXSW.
So, in a month we wrote the idea, shot the idea, edited the idea, and actually made it something that we could submit. I think it was that sense of urgency that drove us to make the project. And I learned a lot of things from it.”
-Teja Mettu (paraphrased)
Article also available in Issue One, coming soon...
Written by Star Catherine.
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