theSopranos actor and director Michael Imperioli has directed his first film, The Hungry Ghosts, which will screen at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on September 15. The Associated Press reports that ticket sales will “benefit Tibetan refugees and elderly Buddhist monks led by the Dalai Lama.”

More from the AP:

“Buddhism is an antidote to the characters in the film,” said the 43-year-old director, who studies Eastern philosophy and practices the tae kwon do martial art with his wife and children.

His movie’s characters float like ghosts through an intense 36 hours of New York life, wrestling with drugs, alcohol and sex in what Imperioli calls “the human struggle for completion.”

“They’re lost and searching for something, restless and desirous of something spiritual – and physical,” he said in a telephone interview Saturday, adding with a laugh, “It’s a common affliction, a universal one.”

Michael stopped by Tricycle‘s offices not long ago and an interview with him will appear in the November issue. You can buy tickets to the screening of The Hungry Ghosts here.

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