Family Party is written and directed by Pari Mathur. The film stars Jaya Prasad, Vishal Vaidya, Jai Ahuja, Rahul Nalamasu, and Hunter Milano are high schoolers on a mission to escape a party. Director Pari Mathur completed the script in 2009. The cast was auditioned from the Harker School and Naatak theater group. Principal photography started in August 2013 in Oakland and San Jose, California. Additional scenes were also shot around Saratoga, Pleasanton, and Pacifica.
Getting to know the director in real life we found Pari Mathur grew up in the Bay Area, right behind the Apple Headquarters. He went to college at UC Irvine and picked up a camera. It was the first time he says he fell in love. He knew this was a medium that’d shape his stories so he went to Chapman University for filmmaking thereafter.
While pursuing an MFA in Film Production, he started a production company. “The summer after my first year, I began knocking on doors asking if I could film 30-second spots free of charge for my portfolio and reel. One small business thought my pitch had great value and decided to actually pay me. This blew my mind so I dropped everything and started a business,” says Pari.
Paridym Pictures (now Silk Road Films) got studio space in Mountain View, CA and became an official Ad Creation Specialist for Google TV Adwords.
“But the entire time, there was an itch in my brain—a story called Family Party. So after several years of development, I assembled a rock-star team in 2013 and shot my first feature film.”
Family Party is available in all English-speaking territories on Netflix now.