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Produced by acclaimed film maker Deepa Mehta, and directed by her brother, Dilip Mehta, a new feature film called Cooking with Stella will open the eight Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles tonight. Deepa Mehta is best known for her Academy Award nominated film Water, which featured the same leading ladies, Seema Biswas and Lisa Ray, as this new film. Cooking with Stella is a whimsical tale of the husband of a Canadian diplomat stationed in India, who aspires to learn Indian cuisine from his cook, a South Indian matronly woman named Stella. On the surface Stella is a devout Christian, piously carrying out her duties. But in reality she espouses the philosophy of Robin Hood – that it is okay to steal from the rich to give to the poor. She runs a raging black market business that takes advantage of her position of proximity to wealthy foreigners, and uses it to sustain a small ecosystem of workers in her community, from the nanny, to the gardener, the laundryman, and various vegetable vendors and butchers. According to director Dilip Mehta, “Cooking has been used as a metaphor for the shenanigans that go on in the protagonist Stella’s kitchen.” Tonight’s opening night gala of the Indian Film Festival featuring Cooking with Stella benefits the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research, an independent non-profit research institute working to find improved treatment and a cure for multiple myeloma. Actor Lisa Ray who plays the Canadian diplomat of Indian descent in the film is currently struggling with an onset of the rare disease.

GUEST: Dilip Mehta, Director of Cooking with Stella

Find out more about the film at www.cookingwithstella.com.

Cooking With Stella opens in Los Angeles on Tuesday April 20 at 7:30 pm at the Arclight Hollywood (6360 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles) as part of the Indian Film Festival. Tickets and information at www.indianfilmfestival.org.