J Paul Johnson
Before the devastation of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and other targets in 2001, the deadliest act of aviation terrorism in history had been that of Air India Flight 182. That tragedy, one which took over 300 lives in 1985, is the setting and subject of writer-director Rippin Sindher’s short film simply named Flight 182. It’s an intimate and heart-rending drama depicting an immigrant father who is caught in the crosshairs between love and duty, with the audience all too aware of the imminent threat of political violence.
Flight 182 is a film with special meaning for Sindher. Her own uncle, Daljit Singh Grewal, was one of the 329 people killed on that flight, and she chose to make this film “as an act of remembrance to fight against historical erasure and through cinema, call to justice, exploring how political violence shatters families, dreams, and innocent lives.” Flight 182 stars Sundeep Morrison and Gurinder Sindher and it lists Emmy winner Archie Panjabi, Academy President Janet Yang, Peanut Butter Falcon producer David Thies, and four-time Oscar nominee Ridley Scott among its executive producers.
Rippin Sindher is a multi-hyphenated Punjabi-American creator who has has written and directed the festival-winning films Broken Drawer, The Hideout, and the Congressionally recognized anti-hate documentary SEVA. She is a two-time recipient of The Big Tell Award and recently won the BraveMaker PitchFest Award for her psychological thriller Trapped. For Flight 182, she won the 2024 Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge with CAPE and Janet Yang Productions.
Sindher recently spoke with Film Obsessive Publisher J Paul Johnson about Flight 182‘s inception, production, and reception. The transcript following the video below has been lightly edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: My guest today is Rippin Sindher. She is an award winning Punjabi American writer and director whose work is always rooted in social impact. She’s with us to discuss her true crime short film, Flight 182, about the largest aviation attack prior to 9/11. That’s something, Rippin, I should have you tell our audience a little bit about, and then we could get into the specifics of your film. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Rippin Sindher: Thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me. Yes, like you said, so much of my work is about social impact. So this film is about the biggest attack before 9/11 that a lot of people either haven’t heard about or just haven’t known about because it hasn’t really been in the public narrative. This was a flight that was going from Canada and it was en route to Delhi and it was supposed to stop in London Heathrow, but it went off the Irish coast on June 23rd of 1985. There was a bomb that was planted inside of a suitcase and it took down the 747 in a mid-air explosion. And what really followed was this largest standing investigation in Canadian history, even though it happened on international waters.
And for me, it was something I really lived with for a very long time. My own uncle was on that flight, and yet the courage to tell this story was it just was a little difficult for me because even though there is a political backdrop to the film, this film specifically is about family and what happens when we lose people we love.
Wow, that’s very touching, and your film is very touching. It’s an event from the past. You have a deep and personal connection to it. What makes it especially timely for contemporary audiences today?
The idea of love and loss is a very human emotion. You add to it everything that continues to happen in the world. Any source of violence, whether it’s children going to schools, whether it’s … we’re looking at shootings, whether we’re looking at tragedies. And I think that that idea of how we live in a landscape where we’re not always protected, and it seems like there’s it’s increasingly gotten worse in some ways. So I think that for me, there’s just such a relevance of what does it mean to be a human being and what does it mean to protect human life.
And tragedies continue to happen around the world. But I think there’s a level of accountability that I’m always interested in too. It’s like, what happened, why it happened, and who are these people that are innocent because it can honestly be any of us. It could be you, it could be me. And I always go back to that because it could really be any of us in a moment’s notice in times and spaces like this. These stories really are about humanity—about all of us.
That’s so well put, and I have to compliment you, Rippin, on your script, and I have to compliment your casting, your actors and performers, perhaps especially Sundeep Morrison, who gives us a moment in that film of deep conviction and grief. Can I have you talk about the development of the script and bringing the performers into your production?
Absolutely! So this script, like I said, even though I had kind of known what I wanted to do with this story, it wasn’t until I felt the same sentiment during the pandemic. Do you remember that feeling, Paul, that we all had where there was uncertainty? It was like so much risk of where we were going to go and what we were going to do.
Around that time, I had found this grant from the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE). And it was a $25,000 grant and the parameters of that was to have ten pages. They had to be very tight, and so I really had to rewire my brain to how was I going to tell this huge story and contain it through the lens of a family and put it in very specific locations. But that really catapulted my journey. I do think that Having those guardrails for the script actually made it better. I started early development on, okay, I know that there’s this part of the family in a house that I really want. And then I’m I’m so intrigued and want to know about this bomb making and putting it in the suitcase and what happens when this one suitcase takes over an entire plane.
And so with those pieces in mind, I started to put this puzzle together of the script. And in early development because I was really relying on sound to carry certain things and to be a character and the weather to be a character and all of these other things that maybe you may not notice right at the front, it started to really lay the curvature and the beats of the script.
And just to give you an idea, I had known of Sundeep (Morrison, who plays the wife, Mandeep). It was just really coming down to the finances because there was the point where I hadn’t put up for the grant yet and I wanted to make this film, and I had been self-financing many films before this, and so it just was at a juncture where I thought, I don’t want to compromise making a period piece, even if I just have a little bit of money, a little bit of support. I know what I can do. And I think that the universe really responded because it allowed me to refine the script and then I had $25,000, which is not huge. But I was able to pull this off in 2.5 days.
And coming back to Sundeep, working with the character, when you have such a small budget, you have to be so specific about what you want. And my relationship with Sundeep was truly trusting. You know, I love being like an actor’s director. It’s so fun for me to set up an entire world and say, let’s go play together. Let’s go let you do your job to the best of your ability, and I will be there right by you. And that’s exactly what happened.
It’s a very handsome looking short film—not in the sense that it looks clean or slick or artificially lit or anything like that—it’s a very realistic feeling drama. The family’s kitchen is a little unkempt in all the appropriate ways. The lighting is a little dark but very naturalistic. I just wanted to compliment you on the set design and production, but a lot goes into making this feel very period specific, I’m guessing, as well.
Yes. And thank you so much for catching all of those nuances. Coming from a documentary background in a lot of ways and wanting to pay respect to this true story, but in a way that is a narrative and really brings the viewer in all of those choices you’re talking about, including the home video camera was really shot within the home video camera—absolutely, I wanted this to feel imperfect. I wanted this to feel like you could walk into a house, know nothing about the culture and still identify with all of these things that are common.
We all have stood in a kitchen before. We’ve all traveled somewhere before. We’ve all had arguments with someone we love about whether or not we should do the thing, and I wanted to invite the audience. Ray Huang was my DP [and we] had a lot of sources of inspiration, everything from In the Mood for Love to Minari and really family- centric films in between and I wanted it to pace that way. Thank you for catching on to that.
I will say—fun fact because I love saying it—when you have a film like this and you don’t have a huge budget. I really took part of this film back home to my hometown. It’s a farm town. And I had to think unconventionally. I wallpaper that myself with people in my community, and I also floored the kitchen. I thought it was that important. I thought because you have to it’s all about the textures and …
There’s a certain aesthetic to 1980s kitchen flooring. I’m familiar with it!
Yeah. So I sure was. I was like, No, we got to do this. We got to figure out how. So I’m just grateful that everyone really showed up in their best.
Speaking of hometown, family and community, I’m wondering if your extended family members have seen the film and commented on it. I hope that’s not too personal a question to ask.
No, thank you, thank you for asking that. Yeah, I cannot begin to tell you what a transformative experience this has been to make this film. I started this off with my cousin and it was really a response to grief in our own ways. I had dealt with additional loss and what it transpired into over the last two years, I can’t begin to tell you the amount of people who write me emails to tell me that they have a loved one that was on that flight. Or what this means to have this film in the entire narrative.
I know for my family what this film has done is it’s actually opened up a dialogue with the next generation, with their kids, things that we were too afraid to speak about, things that you see from afar. I think that’s why I’m so passionate about this story and keeping it alive. It’s because at the time, it wasn’t kept alive. As a family member, how are you supposed to pass down information to your own loved ones and keep the memories alive if you don’t even know that they exist?
And so it was quite cathartic to be very open about it. The preparation period, my family gave me so many photographs. There was actually this really special book of remembrance that was given to victims’ families. And in each of the pages, there is a profile of those who were on the flight. And you really see what their families are saying about them.
But what touched me so much is that there’s artwork from children that’s in there. There’s poetry that’s in there, and I went down this huge rabbit hole. I think that’s why the human value of this story there is a doll, a cabbage patch doll that you see in one of the frames of my film. And so that really came from there was a cabbage patch doll found from the water. And just for context the person it belonged to a little girl. She was on the plane with her mom and dad and they were … they’re all gone and only their son remained and he’s an orphan.
And he was in the process, I just got a whole message from him within running the Oscars campaign and saying I just want you to know what you’re doing for the film. Like this is huge. Like, I feel so steamed by this. Like, there’s no award. There’s nothing in the world that can ever, ever, ever match something like that. And I was invited to a humanitarian conference—and this is the 40th anniversary year [of the flight], I should have said that as well—and so being able to be with families who just feel some sense of comfort in knowing that cinema, even if this is a short film, is able to do that, that’s very powerful.
And that’s a powerful story too. I also have to ask you have a couple of very recognizable names attached to this project as executive producers in primetime Emmy winning actress Archie Panjabi, and the four-time Academy Award nominee Ridley Scott. Can you talk a little bit about their involvement with the project and its future prospects?
Yeah. So what’s so beautiful about this project is everything’s been so intentional and organic and it’s never been forced. It’s never like I started this journey and said, Oh, my goodness, Archie is going to come on and then Ridley’s going to come on and it’s going to be this whole thing. In fact, it was always led from such an honest and truthful place and and I do think that something wild was working in the air.
I will just backtrack to say, the way that I met Archie too is, I decided to premiere this film in the hometown of the Origin Story in Canada, and Archie was getting an icon award that night. And even though we were in the same room, our paths fully didn’t cross because people swarmed her and it was very hectic and I said, I’m not going to be like that. But I had just come off of I had just come off of doing work on SWAT, and I had watched her in Under the Bridge, this incredible true story series on Hulu. I just felt like, man, this artist has so many of the same core values.
So fast forward, I ended up writing to her cold and I just said I was admiring her speech. It really moved me. And it was also a point where, like, even though I knew this film is so big and so important, it’s really hard sometimes with certain festivals or gatekeepers or institutions to see the value of a story because everyone has their own reasoning, right? And so the words of that speech that night, it hit me so deep and I just simply, it wasn’t anything. I said, thank you for being you and how empowered I am. And she’s one of the first South Asians who’s ever really broken these barriers.
So as life would have it many months later, We reconnected. She watched the film. She had asked about this film at the festival and said she knew it very well and wanted to help me in any way possible. And so we really got on this journey, and Archie has been a backbone, really, truly in arms with me and saw the film for what it was. So we continued to go on these different film festivals. And then somewhere along the lines, this idea of, wouldn’t it be cool if we could have access to a global platform like the Oscars? Wouldn’t that be neat if we could get more people to see this film? So it ended up getting qualified and moving forward and Ridley’s team caught wind of it. And Archie has worked with Ridley in the past before.
I was very intentional, though, in this entire process. To me, I am someone that, don’t want to just be on the merit of a name, having worked at the Directors Guild of America for more than ten years and really respecting the craft, it was so full circle too because when I was young and I was working there, I had seen Ridley Scott get the Lifetime Achievement Award. Who would have ever guessed that life would have it like this and it’s so wild and to have someone like him say, thumbs up, I’m on board of this film, I support it. It’s rare. How many times does he ever really do that? Yes, that’s the start.
That’s thrilling. And I understand that the short film is its own completely self-contained narrative that tells its own intimate human drama with a very clear, finite beginning, middle, and end. But you also envision this as a feature film, correct? And that you see in it the potential for longer, broader narrative to be told. Can you talk to those prospects or potentially what you see in it?
So I’ve always known that this is going to be a feature film in my mind. And if anything, I knew that I wanted to show what I could do with the short film, keep it contained with the full art, that people could get a real sense for. And while the short has been going on the festival circuit, the feature film version has been written and I’ve been an incubator called Rideback Rise that is run by Dan Lin and, you know, the script is the feature is so much bigger, in terms of it really goes into the investigative angles and the mishandled evidence. We’re still from the perspective of the widow, but it really is about the fight for justice against the system and the fight for answers.
And so every day I wake up, it’s like, the short is done now and I’m like, so just pulled to be part of this feature and get it made and get it to its best of its ability. And yeah, so that’s kind of the extent that I can talk about it at this juncture. But what I love is that coming off of the campaign, there’s a real interest from people to see what this film is.
That does not surprise me at all. I mean, it stands on its own as its own drama and its own story. It’s very compelling and very touching, but you can also see the potential for the other angles and elements to be told and what happens really after the events that we’ve seen, what the consequences of it, what the aftermaths are.
Rippin, you have such a rich CV in film and television and documentary and advocacy. Is this project your sole focus at the moment? You have others on the way that you want to mention? I imagine you have plenty of irons in the fire!
You know, we all have our darlings! I try not to play favorites, but it does catch up with me sometimes. I mean this is the one film that is, is just all of me in all of the ways. Outside of this, I have a second feature as well that’s a little bit different. I’m always looking for how do you take Two genres, bend them. What’s something that I can add value to, I have a wedding thriller that’s different, and that’s the psychology of the pressures of getting married and not knowing who you’re getting married to. It’s a little different, but I’m very excited about it.
I’m also producing this incredible film about the start of the Black Student Union and the largest strike in academic history, and it is what led to the curriculum, the Ethnic Studies curriculum that we have, and that is often, under threat in this world. So those are a few of my main projects. I also have some IP that I secured recently. So I’m just a girl with a dream, Paul, I’m out here trying to do the things that I love and also just looking at it from the perspective of, hey, do I have value that I can add to story? Does my perspective enhance the material? And if it does, then I’m in.
Well, I’ve only seen a little bit of your work, Rippin, but it seems so clear to me that it does and it will continue to. I’m hoping at some point in the future, you’d be willing to come back to Film Obsessive and talk about either or both of those projects or maybe a feature film version of Flight 182 that we can all see in the theaters. In the meantime, thank you so much for talking with us today.
Thank you so much. What a pleasure.
Flight 182 will screen next on February 7th, 2026, at the Napa Valley Asian American Film Festival. To follow related news and events, see www.sindherella.com or @flight182film and @rsindher on Instagram.
