Mango Chile Pie

On the anniversary of their mother’s death, three estranged sisters get stuck in their family fire station and their decades-long resentments come spilling out.

Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Development
Writer: Meg Indurti
Director: Karan Sunil
Producer: Aishwarya Sonar
 
Email: meg.indurti@gmail.com
 
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Logline

On the anniversary of their mother’s death, three estranged sisters get stuck in their family fire station and their decades-long resentments come spilling out.

Synopsis

Sonam Deol is the current runner of the Deol Family Fire Station in a where there’s not enough public funding for a fire station. Her older sisters, Dar and Trisha left to pursue their dreams in big cities.

Sonam feels left-behind, especially after her mother passes away. The only company she has is her Roomba that she’s turned into a person-like assistant with googly eyes and a top hat.

On the anniversary of their mother’s death, Dar and Trisha come home to sort out their will. All Sonam wants is for them to be a sitcom-like family. But Dar and Trisha are in a rush to leave. Then, a fire and stuck door trap them in the station. They find themselves revisiting old arguments, causing Trisha to have a panic attack like she used to when they fought in their childhood.

Dar and Sonam form a truce for the sake of Trisha and set out to find an emergency key that Sonam says is buried in a locker blocked by old furniture. As they sort through boxes of pictures, the sisters go down memory lane and bond. While Dar is on a mission to find a key, Sonam secretly tries to keep them stuck there, feeling close to her sisters for the first time in years.

When the sisters realize Sonam’s agenda, Dar succumbs into her fury, sledgehammering the door. Trisha finally stands up to them, causing them to recognize the pain they’re inflicting on each other and confront their buried remorse and anger. Their newfound brutal honesty paves the way for forgiveness and understanding of their intergenerational trauma. Connected now, they work together to sledgehammer and hack the door to once and for all, escape their past.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Meg Indurti – Writer
Meg Indurti is a comedy writer and satirist for The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Reductress, and a headline contributor for The Onion. She is known for her sharp political commentary and is consistently voted in “best of” by The New Yorker. As a stand-up comedian, she started and rose up the ranks of Chicago, being named Chicago Reader’s People to Know in 2016, selected as a StandUp NBC Semi-Finalist in 2017, and featured in the NBC Breakout Comedy Festival in 2019. She is currently adapting an Argentenian feature film script for South Asian audiences led by director Shyam Madiraju, and writing a collection of autobiographical humour essays for The Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agency titled, “The First Immigrant Bipolar Woman of Color Who Sleeps In Till Noon To Write This Book.”

Karan Sunil – Director
Karan Sunil is an Indian-American writer and director based in LA. He is currently developing a thriller series Scammers with Marginal MediaWorks and Anupam Tripathi (Squid Game) attached as lead. He wrote and directed a hit comedy web series Code-Switched that he developed as a series for Hulu and Lionsgate TV. He has also developed a dark comedy series with Sony Pictures Television. Karan was a 2020 Film Independent Project Involve Writing Fellow where the short film he wrote, Omolara, premiered at the 2021 Urbanworld Film Festival. He has previously written humor for The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. Having immigrated from India as a child, Karan has been on a journey to use genre to reflect the humor and pain that comes from characters caught between different worlds. He is a graduate of DePaul University with a BA in Digital Cinema & Television Writing.

Aishwarya Sonar – Producer
Aishwarya Sonar is a producer working at the intersection of US projects focused on identity and humanity. A UCLA film graduate, Sonar has worked with Priyanka Chopra’s Purple Pebble Pictures on two features. She has produced over 15 shorts, which have played at festivals worldwide and available to stream on disney+/hotstar. Features co-produced by Sonar, Chitrakut and normal. are now available on Jio and Tubi respectively. Her most recent short, Happy Rakhi, with CAPE and Janet Yang’s prod-co premiered at the Palm Springs ShortFest. Her next, Hema, starring Rajshri Deshpande and Second-Skin starring Joel Kinnaman and Kelly Gale are currently in post-production. Sonar was also selected at Film London’s Production Finance Market and Film Bazaar’s Co- Production Market in 2022 with feature, Still Here. With 8 years of experience, Sonar currently has a slate of TV and Film projects under her prod co, Lambe Log Productions.

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Contact

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