Alia (Sophia Ali, “The Wilds”) returns home from college and discovers there’s a lot about her mother she doesn’t know in “India Sweets and Spices.” A trailer for Geeta Malik’s feature has dropped.

A new neighbor informs Alia that she knew Alia’s mother, Sheila (Manisha Koirala), at university in Delhi. It turns out Sheila — whom Alia always thought of as critical and shallow — was a student activist. But Sheila isn’t interested in rehashing the past. “It’s not who I am anymore,” she says.

Sheila’s apparent transformation shakes Alia. “What if we are who we are, and then everything changes and we don’t recognize ourselves anymore?” she worries.

“India Sweets and Spices” made its world premiere at Tribeca this past June. It also screened at the San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Writer-director Malik told Women and Hollywood the film was inspired by the dinner parties she attended with her parents growing up. “We’d spend so many evenings listening to people brag about their amazing lives and gossip about their friends, and it was all so absurdly over-the-top,” she recalled. “The film started out as a pure comedy, an affectionate and irreverent send-up of those parties. But as I wrote, I realized that the adults were gossiping because they were hiding something — their secrets, their fears, their desires, their pasts.” She added, “And then I became a mom myself, and I understood what it is like to have lived an entire life before my children knew me, and how I carried my own past with me in many subconscious ways.”

Feature “Troublemaker” and shorts “Shameless” and “Beast” are among Malik’s other credits.

“India Sweets and Spices” will hit theaters November 19.