Expelled from Uganda during Idi Amin's campaign to rid the country of all people of Asian descent, Meena (Sarita Choudhury) and her family of Indian heritage seem to have lived everywhere at one time or another but India. Now settled in the American South, even as her father still pines for his Ugandan home, her family is not immune to the stark racial divides that dictate society. When a romance between Meena and a Black business owner, Demetrius (Denzel Washington), exacerbates those divisions, Mississippi Masala dives headlong into the tangled weeds of prejudice, colorism and geographic displacement. Radiant, bright and full of life, this second feature from Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) is a testament to desire and its permutations in a globalized culture.

D: Mira Nair, US, 1991, 1h58m

Programmed as part of the Asian Diaspora on Screen series in collaboration with the Dartmouth Asian American Studies Collective (DAASC).