Faisal KhanMarrakech (Morocco), Dec. 2 -- When Dhiraj Mahey and his team sent out an open call for talent last year to play a 'South Asian'-origin boy in their new film, little did they know their movie would soon become a movement.
"We received 1,000 audition tapes," beams Mahey, a British-Indian producer with roots in Uttar Pradesh, about the remarkable response to their project featuring a bevy of brown-skinned children.
The film, modestly titled Ish, was about South Asian children growing up in England amidst racism and phobia against the community today.
Racism was something Mahey knew about as a teenager in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, when anti-immigrant riots traumatised children like him from the vast South Asian community i...