I’m picking that a movie called ‘The Namesake’ will be one of the quiet cinema successes of 2007 and well worth a look see. The storyline centres on a migrant Indian family who move to America to make a better life for their young children. The elder child, played by Kal Penn (he blogs too), yearns to reconnect to his Indian roots and returns to the mother country in an effort to console himself after a relationship breakup. Directed by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) the film has a downunder connection featuring emerging Aussie actor Jacinda Barrett as the American girlfriend struggling to bridge the cultural gulf.

The plight of migrants who have transplanted into a foreign culture is a theme that resonates when I think about how many of the hot technology startups out of Silicon Valley were founded by first or second generation migrants, particularly from Asia. Cultural crossover and the ability to have skilled migrants and migrant entrepreneurs integrate into the economy is an important issue here in NZ too and worthy of a little more research perhaps. So with the support of the AsiaNZ Foundation we have been hosting a skilled migrants forum on ION over the last few months to gather some data on migrant experiences. [tags]Namesake, India, America, film, culture, migrant[/tags]