In the 1950s, Lena Khan’s grandfather became a local legend after killing a tiger that terrorized his rural community. Khan brought that story to her debut film, “The Tiger Hunter,” which premiered Friday night in Los Angeles, New York and select cities for a limited release.
The film centers around Sami Malik, played by Danny Pudi (“Community”), an aspiring twenty-something engineer who leaves his rural Indian village for a job opportunity in 1970s Chicago. Malik still tries to win over his childhood crush and live up to his father, a celebrated tiger hunter who died earlier in his youth, while navigating through the pains of his job falling apart.
What comes of the film is a sweet, lighthearted dramedy that forgoes the harsher details of immigrant life and instead portrays the life of young twenty-somethings and their quest to find love, success and friendship.
“A lot of immigration stories are just sob stories, and that’s not my thing,” Khan told NBC.
“Tiger Hunter” also stars Karen David (“Once Upon A Time”) as Malik’s love interest Ruby Iqbal, as well as Jon Heder (“Napoleon Dynamite”), Rizwan Manji (“The Wolf of Wall Street”), Iqbal Theba (“Glee”), Sam Page (“House of Cards”), Parvesh Cheena (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), Michael McMillan (Silicon Valley) and Kevin Pollak.
