Trinidadian actor stars in Festival of Lights

Fresh off a successful performance stint in New York, T&T-born Stephen Hadeed Jr is back in town and will premiere his latest film project, Festival of Lights at the 2011 T&T Film Festival. Hadeed, who plays the role of Ravin in Festival of Lights, first got bitten by the acting bug at a young age when he donned the character of Joseph in a local production of the Nativity. Since then, this still relatively young actor has accomplished several amazing feats in the global entertainment industry, which include feature performances in films such as A Girl and Her Guardian and the Briefcase, high profile appearances in Off-Broadway productions of Home Sweet Home and Spring’s Awakening, and even a gig on the highly-rated US talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

As the sole Trinibagonian talent to be featured in Festival of Lights, Hadeed joins a cast of other notable international actors including Toronto’s Melinda Shankar (Degrassi High, Harriet the Spy), Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Falls, Pratical Magic), Jimi Mistry (The Mystic Masseur, The Guru), and Ritu Singh Pande. This film is written and directed by Guyanese-American film-maker Shundell Prasad and tells the story of Reshma, who struggles to navigate a broken relationship with her mother, while memories of her absent father continue to haunt her. After receiving some shocking news, she returns to her native land to discover the truth about her family’s past. Weaving between a politically volatile Guyana in the late 1970s and the US in the early 1990s, this is a searching drama about exile, loss, and the ties that bind.
In addition to acting, Hadeed also does voice over work for radio, advertisements and popular video games such as World of Warcraft, script writing and is currently producing a TV show.

Now back on local soil, he strongly commends the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company for its incredible job of nurturing T&T’s bourgeoning industry to its current level. Locally, this very achieved actor plans on getting quite involved in several aspects of the craft, including the development of youth acting programmes. Festival of Lights was shot on location in both New York and Guyana and will have its major screening during the 2011 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival tomorrow at 7 pm at the Little Carib Theatre, Woodbrook, Port-Of-Spain.