Farah Naz Rishi's "The Flightless Birds of New Hope"

Farah Naz Rishi is a Pakistani-American Muslim writer and voice actor, but in another life, she’s worked stints as a lawyer, a video game journalist, and an editorial assistant. She received her B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr College, her J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School, and her love of weaving stories from the Odyssey Writing Workshop. When she’s not writing, she’s probably hanging out with video game characters. Rishi lives in Philadelphia.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Flightless Birds of New Hope:

The Flightless Birds of New Hope follows three estranged siblings who reunite after their parents’ deaths and set out on a cross-country road trip to recover the family’s missing cockatoo. As they chase the bird who once commanded all their parents’ devotion, the trip becomes an unsteady reckoning with old resentments, unfinished grief, and the possibility—however tentative—of finding their way back to one another.

The siblings are shaped as much by what they’ve avoided as by what they’ve endured. Aden, the eldest, is a cynical lawyer who ran away from home and rarely looks back. Aliza, the middle child, stayed, her loyalty slowly turning into a kind of inertia. And Sammy, the youngest, remains gentle and observant, still willing to love everyone at once, even when it hurts.

///

When I write, I rarely have actors in mind. Part of that may be because I’m a Pakistani-American writing about Pakistani-American families, and the list of obvious references is short. Still, once the book was finished, I let myself imagine what an adaptation might look like.

For Aden, Haroon Khan feels like a natural fit. He has an ease with humor that doesn’t undercut emotional depth, and that balance matters for a character who often uses wit to keep people at a distance. Aden needs to be difficult without becoming unreadable, and I think Khan could manage that tension.

For Aliza, I’d love to see Iman Vellani. She brings a grounded warmth that would suit Aliza’s caretaking instincts, but she also has the range to convey both her sharpness and spiritual exhaustion. Aliza is someone who has learned to be capable at the expense of herself, and I think Vellani could hold both the protectiveness and the quiet cost of that role.

Sammy is the hardest to cast. Ideally, I’d love to see an open call in Pakistani-American communities to find someone who feels unpolished and real—someone who seems to have wandered onto the set straight from the book. And I like the idea of this story being a starting point for a new actor’s career.

In terms of direction, I’m drawn to filmmakers who understand how grief and humor coexist. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who directed Little Miss Sunshine, were a major influence on the book. That said, if Mira Nair, Nida Manzoor, or Riz Ahmed were ever interested, I would simply sob from joy.

At its heart, this is a story about family, memory, and the small moments that shape us long after we’ve moved on. Any film version would need to honor that quietness—and the strange, enduring pull of shared history between siblings.

Visit Farah Naz Rishi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue