When Hari Got Married

When Hari Got Married: Love in the Time of the Mobile Phone
2013, UK/India, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, 75 minutes

Have you ever fallen in love over the phone? Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam’s touching true tale of a taxi driver’s long distance arranged marriage, by mobile phone.

Hari, a taxi driver in the Indian Himalaya, is getting married to a girl he has never met but with whom he has nevertheless fallen in love on the mobile phone. Outspoken, opinionated and funny, Hari grapples with nerves, heartburn and mounting tension as the day of reckoning draws close. As India rapidly modernizes, dramatic changes are taking place even in his faraway village. But gods, oracles, and age-old traditions still play an important role in everyday life and come together to ensure an auspicious wedding.

A conversation with the filmmakers will follow the film.

About the Speakers

Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam are an Indian-Tibetan wife-and-husband team, and have been making films since their student days in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 80s.

Ritu was born in New Delhi. She studied at Miranda House in Delhi University and went on to finish her studies at California College of the Arts in Oakland.

Tenzing was born in Darjeeling in India to Tibetan refugee parents. He studied at St Stephens College in Delhi University and then specialized in documentary filmmaking at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley.

Their films include Dreaming Lhasa (2005), The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet (1999); The Thread of Karma (2007), The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009). Currently in production is The Sweet Requiem.