CALORIE

Coming to theatres in 2026

Three women, three generations, one summer in India that changes their lives forever.

Calorie is an intergenerational story of Monika, a Sikh-Canadian who must come to terms with a tragedy that she has kept secret from her two teenage daughters as she struggles to maintain her relationship with them. In the hopes of setting things right, she sends Alia, her calorie-obsessed 13-year-old, and her 17-year-old Simi, to stay with relatives in Amritsar for the summer, and to give her time to take on her own demons. Monika has been haunted by memories of her mother who was killed in the 1985 Air India bombing when she was a teenager. When Monika finally joins her daughters in India, she receives a cold welcome from the girls who feel abandoned by her.

Based on a real life tragedy, Calorie follows a family living under the weight of a traumatic past while grappling to find their way back home to one another.

2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the bombing Air India flight 182 which exploded in mid air over Ireland, killing all 329 passengers. My mother and younger sister left Montreal for India and were killed on that flight. The perpetrators were Canadian Sikh militants, with roots in Amritsar, the home of the Sikh shrine The Golden Temple. The very town my mother was returning to, to reunite with her family. The very town where I spent countless blissful childhood summers. These events are the inspiration for Calorie.

The tragedy inevitably left an indelible imprint on me and on my family, and on the families and friends of the victims. At a time when I was coming of age and finding myself as a young woman, the loss left a hole. The tragedy has a long history with origins of generations ago, and it now reverberates in the generations to come. The bombing occurred at a time when “terrorism” was not the loaded and racially charged term that it is today. Everyone assumes to know the good guys from the bad guys.

Calorie throws these perceptions into question by diving into the nucleus of an ordinary middle class family grappling with current issues that point to the intersections of histories, the arbitrariness of borders and the interconnectedness of family. The obscurity of the event within the world’s consciousness created silences within the community, and within families, producing a generation that is growing up disconnected from their heritage, their lineage and from themselves.

With Calorie I am telling a contemporary story of one family and excavating the complicated and entangled relationship daughters have with their mothers. It’s an intergenerational story that crosses cultures and borders. One embedded in a political history that appears invisible yet is lurking underneath the surface of day to day life.

Eisha Marjara first drew attention with her NFB feature docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen that established her as a groundbreaking filmmaker. The film received the Critic’s Choice Award at Locarno Film Festival and the Jury Prize at the München Dokumentarfilm Festival. It has been described as“one of the most auspicious film debuts on the Canadian scene.” She also wrote and directed the German-Canadian The Tourist, queer drama House for Sale and the dramatic-comedy Venus which tells the story of a South Asian trans woman who discovers that she has a teenaged son. The film received the EDA Award for best female-directed feature film at Whistler Film Festival, the best feature film at Cinequest Film Festival and multiple of other awards. 

Her latest NFB / Compass Productions doc Am I the Skinniest Person You’ve Ever Seen? received the Betty Youson award for the best Canadian short film at the 2024 Hot Docs film festival where it had its world premiere. Her upcoming feature Calorie produced by Joe Balass, starring Anupam Kher and Ellora Patnaik is a heart-warming drama about a family coming to terms with a real life tragedy. Marjara has also authored her debut novel Faerie (Arsenal Pulp Press) and produced the touching and provocative  photo  essay Remember me Nought, about the Air India tragedy of flight 182 which was featured in The Walrus and Descant magazines. She was recently selected for the Writers Lab Canada for her feature film script STOP BATH.

Joe Balass founded Compass Productions in 1997. He works in both fiction and documentary. He has produced and directed a number of award-winning films including: Nana, George & me (1997), The Devil in the Holy Water (2002), Parting Words (2006), Baghdad Twist (2007), JOY! Portrait of a Nun (2012), The Length of the Alphabet (2013), Venus (2017) and The Affairs of Lidia (2022). He is known for a  blend of seriousness and humour in his work. His films have screened at numerous festivals including TIFF, Tribeca, IDFA, Cinequest and Torino. Both the Cinémathèque québécoise and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival have honoured him with a retrospective of his work. 

Balass recently completed the Canada-India feature, Calorie, by writer/director Eisha Marjara.  And he is currently developing Mary,Mary and Santo Cabron by Bruce LaBruce, as well as, Farida, adapted from the novel of the same name by the award-winning Canadian-Iraqi writer Naïm Kattan.

In addition, Balass organises the Journées du cinéma québécois en Italie, a festival dedicated to screening francophone Canadian work in Italy, now in its twentieth edition.