Mukherjee, I., & Williams, M. G. (2020). Migration, mobility and sojourning in cross-cultural films: Interculturing cinema. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Ishani Mukherjee and Maggie Griffith Williams analyze six cross-cultural films through an intercultural communication lens and argue that their depictions of migration, mobility, and the resulting intercultural communications are complex and stressful moments of conflict, with mixed outcomes ranging from productive personal growth to endless oppression, familial or social separation, and loss of identity.
Global movements and intercultural communication are oft-explored themes in popular cinema from Hollywood and beyond. The authors pay homage to this cinematic trend by locating transnational films within key themes that tie into global movements, their complexities, and implications. While some films focus on migrants’ experiences of culture-shock, cultural assimilation and/or integration, some cinematic texts focus on cultural identities that are in transition within contexts of social mobility and movements. Other films explore the short-term intercultural impact that sojourners experience in unfamiliar cultural spaces and different social positions.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 