Nardeep Khurmi’s “Land of Gold,” which won AT&T’s Untold Stories award at the Tribeca Film Festival, will have a limited theatrical release on May 5 before premiering May 15 on HBO Max.
The film follows a first-generation Punjabi truck driver and terrified father-to-be who discovers a young Mexican-American girl inside his trailer after taking a last-minute job before his baby is due.
Khurmi wrote, directed and stars in the film opposite Caroline Valencia (“Only Murders in the Building”), Pallavi Sastry (“The Walking Dead: Dead City”), Iqbal Theba (“Glee”), and Riti Sachdeva (“High Maintenance”). Keertana Sastry produced the film alongside Pallavi Sastry and Simon Taufique. It marks Khurmi’s feature directorial debut after helming a variety of shorts (“Unknown Caller”) and episodic TV series (“The Achiever”).
“My goal is to tell underrepresented stories, creating an empathetic space for audiences to connect with people, cultures, and experiences they may know little about,” Khurmi says. “I am thrilled audiences will be able to see the film theatrically and streaming on HBO Max. This film has been an incredible gift. I’m so excited for the world to see the beautiful work the ‘Land of Gold’ team has accomplished.”
The film’s script won best drama at the 2021 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards, and was subsequently nominated for best local feature at the 2022 Philadelphia Film Festival and best feature at the 2022 Denver International Film Festival. After pitching “Land of Gold” at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, Khurmi received the AT&T Presents: Untold Stories prize, a multi-year, multi-tier alliance between AT&T and Tribeca which awards a deserving filmmaker $1M to produce their film, along with mentorship and distribution pathways. The film follows the program’s first three nationally distributed features, “Nigerian Prince,” “Lucky Grandma” and “Marvelous and the Black Hole.”
Following its limited theatrical release, “Land of Gold” will be available starting May 15 on Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max. It will continue to be available on the streaming service after it gets rebranded as Max on May 23
