cultural dislocation

Estrangement across a national or ethnic culture — a gap between peoples, not between a person and their own society. The character cannot operate inside the codes of a country: a traveller or coloniser who misreads the place they are in, a returnee whose homeland moved on without them, a diaspora child fluent in neither side, someone whose nation changed underneath them. Where Immigrant Experience is about the work of settling, this is about the condition of not fitting, which can be permanent and is often not chosen.

It requires two cultures. Being out of step with your own society's class, generation, family or sexual norms is not this — no matter how estranged the character feels.

Films here also carry Immigrant Experience, Coming of Age, Identity Crisis, Found Family, Moral Ambiguity · Most represented: Ann Hui, Edward Yang, Tsui Hark, John Woo, Hirokazu Kore-eda.