Give as a gift
Recipes and flavors defy distance in how they bring people together in these films. Food serves as a connection to our families and broader communities regardless of where we find ourselves.
This screening features 3 films. Toggle between film descriptions by scrolling and clicking on the buttons on the top right.
Sriram is the ultimate role model. Polite. Optimized. Easy to love. He is the system’s favorite kind of citizen: the model minority who never makes trouble. The American Dream algorithm adores those like him even as they lose their sense of self.
When a bureaucratic excuse traps Sriram inside the system and threatens his ability to go home, he turns to the one thing the algorithm cannot fully regulate: his mother’s tamarind rice. What begins as comfort becomes a way of staying human. In a world that tracks everything, even remembering is dangerous. And thus begins a dangerous journey where Sriram must fight to break free from the cage.
Jam Boy is an introspective and unsettling sci-fi allegory about the quiet horror of being the Model Minority. It puts a spotlight on the stories of countless immigrants in the US who since decades have built and codified their lives around the American dream and find themselves trapped on a leash by an ever-changing immigration algorithm. It is a disappearance anthem that traces the psychology of model minorities that celebrate becoming invisible cogs that run the capitalist machinery powering today’s global economy.
Director Biography - Sriram Emani
Sriram Emani is an actor, filmmaker, and founder of the global arts platform IndianRaga. His creative work blends cultural heritage with bold, contemporary storytelling. As an actor, he recently appeared alongside Kathy Bates in Matlock (CBS) and Heather Graham in Chosen Family (Verdi Productions). As a filmmaker, Sriram’s work draws from his personal journey as an immigrant and his deep interest in dystopian futures, identity, and freedom.
His latest short film Jam Boy — a sci-fi allegory about food, memory, and resistance — has been developed as a proof-of-concept for a feature currently in progress. Prior to filmmaking, Sriram built IndianRaga into one of the largest platforms for South Asian performing artists worldwide, producing over 2,000 music and dance videos and earning global recognition, including a feature at Lincoln Center and partnerships with the BBC and the Kennedy Center.
An MIT Sloan graduate and lifelong storyteller, Sriram is committed to creating films that cross borders, challenge systems, and celebrate the human spirit.
Director Statement
I grew up learning when to make myself smaller. How to lower my voice. How to hide the smell of food that marked me as different. These were not dramatic lessons. They were practical ones, learned quietly, in order to move through the world without friction.
Years later, living in the United States, I began to notice how often compliance is framed as maturity, professionalism, or success. Silence is rewarded. Emotional restraint is praised. Over time, I felt myself becoming very good at surviving systems that asked less and less of me as a human being.
Jam Boy came from that unease. I was interested in what happens when adaptation goes too far, when the skills that help you belong slowly erase the parts of you that once felt alive. The film is not about the future as spectacle, but about patterns that already exist, pushed just far enough to become visible.
Food became central because it is the one place where memory resists efficiency. Cooking carries smell, texture, history, and care. It does not optimize well. For me, it is inseparable from my mother, from home, and from a sense of self that cannot be flattened without loss.
I made Jam Boy to sit inside that tension, not to resolve it. The film asks what we trade for permission, and whether reclaiming joy can itself feel dangerous.
Recipes and flavors defy distance in how they bring people together in these films. Food serves as a connection to our families and broader communities regardless of where we find ourselves.
This screening features 3 films. Toggle between film descriptions by scrolling and clicking on the buttons on the top right.
Sriram is the ultimate role model. Polite. Optimized. Easy to love. He is the system’s favorite kind of citizen: the model minority who never makes trouble. The American Dream algorithm adores those like him even as they lose their sense of self.
When a bureaucratic excuse traps Sriram inside the system and threatens his ability to go home, he turns to the one thing the algorithm cannot fully regulate: his mother’s tamarind rice. What begins as comfort becomes a way of staying human. In a world that tracks everything, even remembering is dangerous. And thus begins a dangerous journey where Sriram must fight to break free from the cage.
Jam Boy is an introspective and unsettling sci-fi allegory about the quiet horror of being the Model Minority. It puts a spotlight on the stories of countless immigrants in the US who since decades have built and codified their lives around the American dream and find themselves trapped on a leash by an ever-changing immigration algorithm. It is a disappearance anthem that traces the psychology of model minorities that celebrate becoming invisible cogs that run the capitalist machinery powering today’s global economy.
Director Biography - Sriram Emani
Sriram Emani is an actor, filmmaker, and founder of the global arts platform IndianRaga. His creative work blends cultural heritage with bold, contemporary storytelling. As an actor, he recently appeared alongside Kathy Bates in Matlock (CBS) and Heather Graham in Chosen Family (Verdi Productions). As a filmmaker, Sriram’s work draws from his personal journey as an immigrant and his deep interest in dystopian futures, identity, and freedom.
His latest short film Jam Boy — a sci-fi allegory about food, memory, and resistance — has been developed as a proof-of-concept for a feature currently in progress. Prior to filmmaking, Sriram built IndianRaga into one of the largest platforms for South Asian performing artists worldwide, producing over 2,000 music and dance videos and earning global recognition, including a feature at Lincoln Center and partnerships with the BBC and the Kennedy Center.
An MIT Sloan graduate and lifelong storyteller, Sriram is committed to creating films that cross borders, challenge systems, and celebrate the human spirit.
Director Statement
I grew up learning when to make myself smaller. How to lower my voice. How to hide the smell of food that marked me as different. These were not dramatic lessons. They were practical ones, learned quietly, in order to move through the world without friction.
Years later, living in the United States, I began to notice how often compliance is framed as maturity, professionalism, or success. Silence is rewarded. Emotional restraint is praised. Over time, I felt myself becoming very good at surviving systems that asked less and less of me as a human being.
Jam Boy came from that unease. I was interested in what happens when adaptation goes too far, when the skills that help you belong slowly erase the parts of you that once felt alive. The film is not about the future as spectacle, but about patterns that already exist, pushed just far enough to become visible.
Food became central because it is the one place where memory resists efficiency. Cooking carries smell, texture, history, and care. It does not optimize well. For me, it is inseparable from my mother, from home, and from a sense of self that cannot be flattened without loss.
I made Jam Boy to sit inside that tension, not to resolve it. The film asks what we trade for permission, and whether reclaiming joy can itself feel dangerous.