A searing hip-hop single released on Friday by an Indo-Canadian artist marks a trend of members of the community countering growing anti-immigration sentiment through popular media.
The recent tendency to scapegoat immigrants, particularly from India, was also captured in the short documentary Butter Chicken To Go, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September. It was part of a special section, Redefined, produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in collaboration with TIFF. The documentary from Toronto-based filmmaker Prajj, the NFB noted, “exposes a deep contradiction: a country that eagerly consumes South Asian cuisine while increasingly excluding the people whose labour sustains it. What does it mean to belong when your presence is both essential and contested? The theme will also be explored in another forthcoming documentary, I, Migrant, from Goodness Films.
In a statement, the filmmakers said the “upcoming Canadian feature documentary is challenging audiences to look beyond statistics and headlines and confront the human realities behind migration.”
The release, Go Back To Where You Came From, is by A R Paisley, or Amarit Rehal, a rapper born in Mississauga in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Paisley, a Sikh, has gained popularity in recent years on digital streaming platforms. The film is directed by Vinay Giridhar, who immigrated to Canada from Kerala as an international student, and produced by Amar Sangha. I want audiences to understand that behind every immigration statistic is someone who has left a piece of their life behind, often making tremendous sacrifices for a future they cannot predict.”
As Sangha said, “As the son of Punjabi immigrants, this film is deeply personal to me.
