Red carpet (6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
USA vs Raj
Please note: Playing in two theaters (7 & 9).
Starring: Kabir Bedi, Shabana Azmi, Emily Shah, Fisher Stevens, Douglas Henshall, Tracy Ifeachor, Mena Massoud
For half a century, Dr Raj Bothra was one of Michigan's most respected surgeons. In the early 2000s, he quit private surgery to start a pain-management centre in Detroit, an essential service for patients other clinics turned away. Over the years he treated tens of thousands of them. He received India's Padma Shri for his humanitarian work, advised the Vatican on global health, and worked alongside Mother Teresa. None of it mattered when the FBI came for him in December 2018.
Raj and his colleagues are indicted on fifty-four counts. Nineteen of them belong to Raj alone, each carrying twenty years. He is seventy-eight. He is denied bail. His assets are frozen. The authorities want him to break. Every lawyer he sees says the same thing: take the plea, save your life. He refuses. He insists the truth has to come out.
While Raj waits inside, his wife Pammi and his daughter Sonia carry the weight he cannot. They live through the indignities, the unresponsive friends, the shut doors. They knock on several firms and are turned away by all of them. Then they find two lawyers nobody thought would take the case: Alan Rogalski and Arthur Millen. The men agree, in the end, only because of how hard Pammi and Sonia have already fought for one man's name. Together, they go to trial against the United States government.
The film moves between the cell, the courtroom, and the lives of the mother and daughter who must endure numerous indignities and struggles as they fight despair with hope.