Nila trailer from Selvamani Selvaraj on Vimeo.

Nila (Moon) from first time director/screenwriter Selvamani Selvaraj will premiere at Silicon Valley’s Cinequest Film Festival this year. The film is part Spotlight section of the film festival that you can watch on Friday, March 4, 2016 at California Theatre in San Jose.

Nila is an independent Tamil film from India. Over the past few years there has been a slow and steady stream of independent films from India and Nila is part of that movement. And like many independent productions this film is partly crowd-funded. Quite a few of these new independent filmmakers from India are trained engineers or techies, who gave up their safe and secure jobs to pursue their creative dreams. Director Selvaraj is one of them.

Nila centers around Vimal, a taxi driver and his chance meeting one rainy night with a childhood flame of his. The film explores unrequited love between these two childhood friends. Nila is based on director Selvaraj’s own experience on love and anguish. The film stars Sruthi Hariharan and Vicky R.

If you miss the premiere, you can catch the film either on March 6, 2016 at Hammer Theatre or on March 7, 2015 at Camera 12 in San Jose. Here is the link about the Nila’s screening at Cinequest.

This year’s Cinequest Film Festival runs from March 1-13, 2016 in various locations in San Jose.