Immigrant stories in films and on TV bridge the empathy gap

The “immigrant” word is being thrown around a lot at the moment, in different contexts, by different people and in different countries.

Sometimes it’s used in a full-throated defence of immigrants, as Bad Bunny did yesterday on the Grammys stage as he reminded everyone, because apparently it’s something that bears reminding, that immigrants are not savage animals, that they’re human.

Sometimes the word is being used as a rhetoric bogeyman by politicians and public figures seeking to stoke racism and hatred, using marginalised communities as a scapegoat for the failures of political cowardice, structural inequity and late-stage capitalism.

At times, it feels like people are drifting further and further apart, riven by age-old suspicions and resentments, seeking easy comfort in the bad-faith arguments of “it’s their fault” instead of looking at the agendas of those pointing the finger.

What we need is to recognise the unity in difference, instead of demanding assimilation. Assimilation into what, exactly? Our culture is not a static state, it morphs and evolves with each wave of new Australians whose contributions to the nation too often go unacknowledged or are diminished.

Immigrants bring with them their heritage, their culture, their stories, as well as skills, ambitions and dreams. The specificity of each person’s experience has value.

So, how do we bridge this empathy gap? No one pretends it’s easy, but art and storytelling has always been there to widen our apertures, to open our hearts and minds.

One way to start, to connect with those different from yourself, to see their humanity, is to just watch and listen.

MINARI

Written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, based loosely on his own experience as a child of a Korean immigrant family living in rural Arkansas during 1980s America. It’s the story of ambition and striving, of trying to carve out a better dream and finding it not going to plan.

The poignant film has a stunning performance from Steven Yeun as dad Jacob, who wants to farm Korean vegetables on a 50-acre plot, and from Youn Yuh-jung, as the mercurial and playful grandmother Soon-ja.

Watch: Prime Video

THE HOME SONG STORIES

Rose is a volatile personality and her kids have little stability as they move homes, are introduced to new men and feel the burden of looking after their mother. The specificity of the story comes from an emotionally true place, and Chen’s powerhouse performance anchors a character that is not always easy to like.

Watch: SBS On Demand

MS MARVEL

One of the best streaming series Marvel made, its titular super is Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-Muslim teen girl from New Jersey with a serious case of hero worship who then discovers she has energy-manipulation powers unlocked by a family heirloom.

There’s a lot of warmth and humour from her immigrant family, and the series even spends an episode flashing back to the generational trauma at the core of their history: the displacement from the chaotic and brutal 1947 Partition of India.

Watch: Disney+

LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI

Adapted from Melina Marchetta’s seminal coming-of-age novel, this film version crackles with life and spirit, just like its protagonist, teenager Josie Alibrandi.

Discriminated against for her Italian background by the privileged Anglo kids at her elite school, Josie is trying to get through adolescent angst without losing herself while reconciling her family’s history including a complicated relationship with her nonna and her birth father.

NEVER HAVE I EVER

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is overflowing with charisma in this teen comedy series co-created by Mindy Kaling. The main character is Devi, a 15-year-old high schooler who still carries traumatic scars from the death of her father Mohan, which she witnessed.

With a crush on the most desired boy in school and with the support of her two friends (Ramona Young and Lee Rodriguez), Devi sometimes clashes with her mother (Poorna Jaganathan), who is trying to balance her career, her single-parenthood and her grief.

But family is everything, and over the show’s four seasons, there is real growth for the characters and their relationships.

Watch: Netflix

THE BIG SICK

Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon wrote the screenplay to this very likeable rom-com, based partly on how they met – he was a struggling stand-up and she was in the audience at one of his gigs.

They hit it off but their fledgling connection hits a massive obstacle when she discovers a box of women’s photos and profiles. His Pakistani parents expect him to make an arranged marriage with someone from their community. Emily breaks it off and soon afterwards, she is hospitalised by a mysterious illness.

Rather than a Love Story-esque weepy, Big Sick is a charming, warm and often funny story about cross-cultural dating. Obviously, it has a happy ending, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten this film.

Watch: Prime Video, Stan

RAMY

Loose and comedic to start with, TV series Ramy, created by filmmaker, actor and stand-up Ramy Youssef, stealthily hits you like a ton of bricks as you’re drawn into the world of what it’s like to grow up as a first-generation Muslim in America.

Imbued with a strong authorial voice, Ramy is at times absurdly funny and at times an incredibly thoughtful exploration of forging your own identity and faith while still connected to your parents’ expectations. It’s often both at the same time.

Watch: Digital purchase

BROOKLYN

The Saoirse Ronan-starring romantic drama uses the narrative framework of being torn between two men, representing what would be very different lives to tell a story about having to choose between two parts of yourself.

Eilis is a young Irish immigrant who moves to New York in the 1950s in search of better opportunities. There, she meets a young Italian immigrant and starts to feel like she could belong, until she returns to Ireland because of her sister’s death, and there, she finds a connection she’s been missing.

Watch: iview

TURNING RED

A sweet and joyful Pixar movie that didn’t get its full due because, well, pandemic times, Turning Red has been read as an allegory for puberty as well as for embracing its cultural heritage instead of trying to tamp it down for the sake of “fitting in”.

The main character is Mei, a Chinese-Canadian teenager who discovers she transforms into a red panda when she’s emotionally distressed because of her family lineage.

Also, in a decision that will feel true-to-life for many diaspora kids, Mei’s friends all come from minority communities, they’re Jewish, Indian-Canadian and Korean-Canadian. No one here is token anything.

Watch: Disney+

SMALL AXE

British artist turned filmmaker Steve McQueen has made lauded films including Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave, but his most personal work has been the anthology series/films grouped under the title of Small Axe.

They’re five separate instalments, running between an hour and two hours, and each is set within the communities of West Indian immigrants, many of whom were part of the Windrush generation.

The longest film, Mangrove, looks at the contentious relationship between law enforcement and Black communities.

Watch: Digital purchase

SIN NOMBRE

Less an immigrant story and more a tale which follows those who’ve put everything on the line to even have the chance at being one, encountering true horrors on their journey.

Cary Fukunaga’s 2009 debut film won two awards at Sundance for this wrenching thriller about a Honduran teen girl and a Mexican gang member trying to flee their pasts, riding the tops of trains north to the promised land.

LITTLE AMERICA

A largely forgotten anthology series from Apple TV’s earlier days in the originals game, Little America is a collection of essentially short films, each a little slice of life of being an immigrant in America.

One is a young boy whose Indian parents run a motel, another about an Iranian man with big dreams. A Nigerian student moves to Oklahoma and falls into cowboy culture. Each story is a capsule of a real life.

Watch: Apple TV

BORAT

OK, Sacha Baron Cohen is a Brit in America and Borat is a satire designed to elicit as many chuckles and wry laughs. But sometimes you need an outsider’s perspective to get clarity on a culture.

Through outrageous stunts and over-the-top set-ups, Borat reflects back to Americans a vision of their country they shouldn’t be too comfortable with if that’s how they view “foreigners”.

Watch: Disney+, Stan

THE EDGE OF HEAVEN

Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin is one of the shining lights of German cinema, and his movies often traverse the immigrant experience, blending his heritage with the country in which he lives.

In The Edge of Heaven, which won a screenplay gong at Cannes, he explores the stories of Turkish immigrants in Germany and a German woman in Turkey, and how their lives and national identities converge.

Watch: Mubi

PADDINGTON 1,2 & 3

There is something radical about emphasising the immigrant status of a character so iconically associated with all things British. Paddington may have a life-long obsession with Anglophilia but he is actually from “dark Peru”, and has to adjust to life in London just as many newcomers do, and is sometimes rejected because of his difference.

The third film sees him return to his homeland in a wacky adventure but with a surprising nuance for, essentially, a kids movie, finds Paddington at a point when he realises that while he’ll always have those bonds to Peru, but home now is with the Browns in England. That pull to two worlds is a common experience for those lucky enough to have them.

Watch: Stan, Binge, HBO Max

FRESH OFF THE BOAT

A charming family sitcom that works on different levels. For one, it’s an old-fashioned TV comedy centred on a nuclear family (mum, dad, three boys, grandma) who live in suburbia and each episode has hijinks involving their neighbours, their jobs and misunderstandings.

On another level, the show uses the pejorative term “FOB” to highlight how much the Taiwanese-American Huangs are pretty much like everyone else, just with their own quirks. When it premiered in 2015, it had been the first American sitcom to have Asian-Americans as its main characters in 20 years.

Watch: Disney+

AN AMERICAN TAIL

Look, this cartoon is from 1986, and there are elements that are not great. Are the entire Cossacks people maligned by being cast as the villainous cats? Yeah, it’s awkward.

But it’s also an adventure about derring-do and the immigrant hustle, as represented in the character of Fievel Mousekewitz, who is separated from his family during the journey to America. It’s set in the late 19th century and New York is a melting pot of persecuted peoples.

Watch: Binge

THE VISITOR

A deeply humanist film with incredibly moving performances from Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass, The Visitor, directed by Spotlight’s Tom McCarthy, emphasises that behind every denunciation of an illegal immigrant is a story.

In this case, it’s that of Tarek, a young Syrian man whose father had years earlier been a journalist and political prisoner, and if he’s deported, he may face retribution. The story is told through a lonely American professor who crosses paths with Tarek, his girlfriend Zainab and his mother Mouna.

Watch: Prime Video