Venus

Directed By Eisha Marjara

A dramatic comedy about a transitioning woman who discovers that she's the mother of a 14 year old boy.

  • ABOUT
  • BIO
SID (Debargo Sanyal) is under pressure to marry a nice Indian girl and raise a family. Sid’s “Mamaji” (Zena Daruwalla) yearns to have grandchildren. Her dreams are about to come true, but not in the way she could've ever imagined… When Sid comes out as a woman, a fourteen year old boy named RALPH (Jamie Mayers) shows up at her door announcing that Sid is his dad. Ralph, surprised to discover that his biological father is now a woman, thinks having a transgender parent is “pretty cool”. But Ralph hasn't told his mother and stepfather that he’s tracked her down. And then there is Sid’s boyfriend DANIEL (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) who has yet to tell his family of his relationship with Sid. Daniel is nowhere near ready to accept Ralph as a step son and complicate his life further. Sid's coming out has a snowball effect that forces everyone out of the closet and to get real. What happens when gender, generations and cultures collide to create a truly modern family?
Montreal-based Marjara first drew attention with the witty and satirical The Incredible Shrinking Woman, but It was her feature NFB docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen that established her a groundbreaking filmmaker. The film received the Critic’s Choice Award at the Locarno Film Festival and the Jury Prize at the München Dokumentarfilm Festival. It has been called it “one of the most auspicious film debuts in the Canadian scene.” Her German-Canadian The Tourist (2006) was nominated as best short at Toronto’s Female Eye Film Festival and the transgender drama House for Sale (2012) received multiple awards at various festivals. Venus, her first fiction feature, received the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Feature Film at Whistler Film Festival, the Best Feature Film at Reelout LGBT Film Festival and Best Feature Narrative Film at Cinequest Film Festival. She is adapting VENUS into a a TV series with Compass Productions. She is also developing the feature, Calorie, with Compass Productions. CALORIE is a story of an indo-Canadian family of women coming to terms with family tragedy. Calorie was selected for the Praxis Screenwriters Lab where she was mentored by screenwriter Guinevere Turner (American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page). Calorie was also selected for the 2016 Goa Film Bazaar coproduction market. Marjara was selected for TIFF Studio this year. She has also authored her debut novel Faerie, about a teenager struggling with anorexia.