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VALENCIA: (As Elena) Maybe there's something. SHAPIRO: If the genesis of the idea came from seeing Punjabi Mexican restaurants, you really wove that into the plot. And I really wanted to explore these themes of, what is it to be brown in America? And what is it to kind of heal from generational trauma and sort of leave something for the next generation that's more hopeful? Like, just even going to school, you have to worry about, is your kid going to come home today? Now you throw on the BIPOC experience onto that or the undocumented experience onto that, and suddenly, it becomes so much more fraught.
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KHURMI: There's so many things that we have to worry about with kids in general. SHAPIRO: This story has a generational element, too. Understood? Understood?ĬAROLINE VALENCIA: (As Elena) Understood.
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KHURMI: (As Kiran) Clean up after yourself. And on a cross-country haul, he finds a Mexican American girl named Elena hiding in the back of his rig. He plays a trucker named Kiran with a pregnant wife at home. SHAPIRO: He explores these two immigrant experiences in a new movie called "Land Of Gold." Khurmi wrote, directed and stars in it. KHURMI: It was, like, this, like, really perfect distillation of the American dream - these two kind of disenfranchised communities coming together to, you know, form their piece of the pie. SHAPIRO: That juxtaposition of cultures started him thinking about different immigrant experiences. Also, how does this exist? Why does this exist? It makes complete sense that you would mix Indian and Mexican food together. And I immediately was like, I have to try them. NARDEEP KHURMI: I love trying new food, and I started seeing these Indian Mexican hybrid restaurants in Los Angeles. The filmmaker Nardeep Khurmi was driving through Los Angeles when something caught his eye.
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