Movies I Want to See: Reimagining the South Asian Diaspora on Screen

As a member of the South Asian diaspora, I am often frustrated by the stories I see on screen. Whether it’s in Bollywood films or diaspora-centric shows, there’s a persistent set of harmful narratives that keep being celebrated. These stories, rooted in casteism, classism, ableism, queerphobia, and colonial legacies, do not reflect the diversity, complexity, or struggles of the full spectrum of South Asian identity. Instead, they reinforce exclusion, uphold privilege, and sideline marginalized voices.

Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (2024) gets further than most. Its villain is a guru leading a nationalist movement who has the police clear a village of a persecuted religious minority so he can take its land, and the people who take in the wounded hero are a temple community of hijras that the same movement is targeting.1 In India, its release, set for April 19, 2024, was postponed indefinitely; by August 2025 it still hadn’t opened in Indian theatres or on any streaming service there.2 It’s still the surface. Its climax settles things the way revenge films do. On the night the guru’s candidate wins an election, the hero beats the police chief to death and kills the guru in his penthouse. Two men are dead, and the election still stands.

What we watch helps shape the world we live in, so the absence of these stories is not a neutral gap. Below are the movies I want to see: each one is a diagnosis of a narrative that currently dominates the screen, and a concrete alternative to it.

1. A Caste-Resistant Love Story

In mainstream South Asian cinema, caste is either ignored or reinforced by implication. The upper-caste hero and heroine fall in love and, even if they face some familial disapproval, it’s never about caste. When Bollywood remade Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi hit Sairat (2016) as Dhadak (2018), critics complained that the remake had all but written out the caste divide that drove the original, leaving wealth and political power to carry the conflict.3 We need love stories that break this silence.

Films that do break it mostly end in grief or rage. Sairat follows Parshya, from a lower-caste fishing family, and Archi, the daughter of an upper-caste landlord and politician, and ends with their young son finding them hacked to death in an honour killing. Manjule’s first feature, Fandry (2013), ends with Jabya, a Dalit boy infatuated with an upper-caste classmate, throwing a stone straight at the camera.4 Pa. Ranjith’s Natchathiram Nagargiradhu (2022) comes nearest to joy. Its heroine, Rene, is a Dalit woman who identifies as an Ambedkarite, and its troupe of actors spends the film building a play about honour killings.5

The Movie I Want to See: A love story between two Dalit protagonists, exploring the beauty of their love in a world that constantly devalues them. But this movie wouldn’t be about their suffering or victimhood—it would be about their joy, their resistance, and their shared defiance of a society that tries to define their worth by their caste. I want to see a movie where caste-oppressed characters get the screen time to fall in love, fight for their dreams, and win, without being boxed into stereotypes. Sairat and Fandry measure Dalit love by the violence it provokes. This one would let the love carry the plot.

What It Could Look Like: Think Geeli Pucchi (from Ajeeb Daastaans) but as a full-length feature, where the Dalit protagonist isn’t stuck in unrequited longing. Instead, she finds her match, and together they challenge the caste system by building a life on their own terms—showing the beauty and strength of Dalit love and community. It’s a story that doesn’t need an upper-caste character to validate their experiences.

2. A Queer South Asian Road Movie

Queer representation in South Asian media is often either non-existent or fraught with conflict. When queer characters are included, their stories revolve around hiding their identities or being ostracized from their families. Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh (2016) dramatizes the case of Ramchandra Siras, an Aligarh Muslim University professor suspended in 2010 after he was secretly filmed with a man in his home. He won his case in court and was found dead in his apartment six days later.6 Rarely do we get to see queer South Asians living openly and freely—especially beyond the traditional narratives of family acceptance.

The Movie I Want to See: A queer South Asian road trip movie where a group of queer, gender-fluid friends set off together, not to escape their queerness but to embrace it. Along the way, they encounter other queer South Asians—artists, activists, lovers—who have carved out spaces of freedom and joy within the diaspora.

What It Could Look Like: We Are Lady Parts is getting closer than anyone’s gotten before. Nida Manzoor’s sitcom about an all-woman Muslim punk band in London has a queer drummer, Ayesha, and in its second season (2024) her girlfriend, Laura, gives her an ultimatum after Ayesha denies in public that they’re together: come out and acknowledge the relationship, or lose her.7 It’s played as comedy, and its plot still runs on disclosure. This road movie would start after it. A mix of the humor and raw emotion you’d find in The Half of It meets the cultural specificity of Made in Heaven. But this time, the queer South Asian characters are fully themselves, with no need for validation from the heteronormative world. They celebrate queer love, friendship, and community without apology.

3. A Neurodiverse Family Drama

In South Asian films, disability is often used as a prop to evoke sympathy, with characters overcoming their disabilities to be accepted by society. We rarely see characters who are neurodiverse or disabled being celebrated for their differences or treated as fully realized people with complex lives and relationships. Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par (2007) is the template. Ishaan, an eight-year-old with dyslexia, is rescued at boarding school by an art teacher played by Khan himself, and the film ends with Ishaan winning the school’s art contest and his father thanking the teacher.8 Shonali Bose’s Margarita with a Straw (2014) is the nearest exception. Its heroine, Laila, has cerebral palsy, is attracted to women and men, moves from Delhi to New York, and comes out to her mother before her mother dies of cancer.9

The Movie I Want to See: A multi-generational family drama that centers around a neurodiverse South Asian woman as she works through family expectations, cultural norms, and her own sense of identity. Her neurodiversity isn’t something to “overcome”; it’s simply a part of who she is. Her story isn’t one of assimilation. She carves out a space in her family and community that honors her full self. Margarita with a Straw is one woman’s story, and her disability is physical. This film would center a neurodivergent woman and stay inside the family, across its generations.

What It Could Look Like: Imagine the emotional depth of The Farewell, but with a South Asian twist that weaves together family tensions, cultural expectations, and neurodiversity. This film would celebrate neurodiverse individuals not as obstacles to be fixed but as people who make family life fuller.

4. A Decolonial Period Drama

Historical films in South Asian cinema tend to focus on glorifying royal figures and colonial narratives. These films rarely address the trauma of colonialism or the ways in which marginalized communities fought against both colonial and upper-caste oppression. I want to see stories that reframe history from the perspective of the oppressed. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018) shows the pattern: a Rajput queen whose story climaxes in jauhar, the women of the palace walking into a fire to avoid capture by an invading army. Swara Bhasker, in an open letter to Bhansali, accused the film of glorifying the practice.10 Pa. Ranjith’s Thangalaan (2024) comes close to the alternative. It’s set around 1850 in North Arcot, among bonded labourers whose ancestors’ land was taken from them and given to Brahmins. A British officer uses their gold-tracing skills to find a mine, and the hero ends by killing the officers and declaring the land’s resources the community’s.11

The Movie I Want to See: A decolonial period drama that tells the story of an anti-colonial, anti-caste resistance movement in rural India during British rule. The protagonists are not kings or queens but ordinary villagers, activists, and revolutionaries who resisted colonial powers while also fighting for caste liberation.

What It Could Look Like: A blend of the visual grandeur of Lagaan with the political edge of The Battle of Algiers. This film would challenge the myth of colonial “benevolence.” It would focus on the strength of community organizing, land rights movements, and caste-based resistance during the struggle for independence—showing that not all heroes wore crowns. Thangalaan tells its story as magic realism around one hero, with Vikram playing five roles. This film would be about the organizing.

5. A Mental Health Coming-of-Age Film

Mental health remains heavily stigmatized in South Asian communities, and the narratives we see in films often reflect this. Characters with mental health struggles are portrayed as needing to “overcome” their issues through resilience, without any discussion of the social, cultural, or familial pressures that may contribute to their struggles. When a film does take distress seriously, it sometimes hands it to horror. Fazil’s Malayalam classic Manichitrathazhu (1993), remade in Hindi as Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007), has a psychiatrist diagnose its heroine, Ganga, with dissociative identity disorder. In her altered state she becomes Nagavalli, a dancer murdered by a feudal patriarch some 150 years earlier, and the cure is an exorcism, staged by the psychiatrist and a tantric priest, in which she destroys a straw dummy standing in for the patriarch.12 A monster is an alibi: as long as fear has a face you can kill, no one has to look at the arrangement that produced it.

Gauri Shinde’s Dear Zindagi (2016) is the nearest exception. Kaira, an aspiring cinematographer, sees a therapist for her insomnia, and the film traces her trouble to parents who left her with her grandparents as a child.13 It treats therapy as ordinary, and it puts the cause in a family rather than a ghost. Its healing is still one patient and one charismatic therapist, played by Shah Rukh Khan.

The Movie I Want to See: A coming-of-age film about a South Asian teenager struggling with anxiety and depression, but with the focus on how her community supports her healing process. Rather than the usual trope of stoic endurance, this film would explore how family, friends, and community members can actively help one another cope with mental health challenges. Therapy, cultural expectations, and generational trauma would be central themes. Where Dear Zindagi hands the work to a therapist, this film would spread it across the people around her, and it wouldn’t need a ghost.

What It Could Look Like: Think Lady Bird but with a focus on mental health and cultural expectations. The story follows her as she learns, with her loved ones’ support, to live with her struggles. The film would also take on how different generations in the diaspora see mental health, and open an honest conversation about healing, care, and understanding.

Reimagining the South Asian Narrative

The movies I want to see are not about representation for its own sake.

Naming these counter-narratives is how you change the terms of the ask: you stop petitioning for scraps within the existing story and start specifying the story that should exist. These are the movies I want to see: stories that make room for everyone.