An affectionate and gently insightful examination of an immigrant story, Karla Murthy’s respectful and thoughtful film charts her father’s journey from India to America, mainly based on a series of recorded interviews with him while he was working the night shift at a Texas gas station.
The film opens rather plaintively as the phone rings at the Food Mart shop at the gas station as daughter and father struggle to get their connection to work. To a degree this is a metaphor for the film in general as its dwells on their relationship and its many ups and downs. Weaving together home videos and phone conversations, the film presents the absorbing story of a life with all the usual ambitions, warmth and frustrations…an ordinary and perhaps familiar life, but also a unique one.
As a young boy, Hananbe N. Shantha Murthy ran away from home to escape the extreme poverty of his Indian village. He travelled the country in search of work, often sleeping on the streets and dreaming that one day his life would change.
Amazingly it did. Working at the Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi he met an American couple from Houston, Texas, who arrived at the hotel very late, and went out of his way to try and find food for them. They asked him if he would like to be a cowboy – he thought it was a joke, but amazingly they offered to sponsor him to immigrate to the US, despite their only being at the hotel for one day. As so he flew to the US, went to school and ended up marrying a young woman from the Philippines who he met at college.
But life in the States was not the American Dream he imagined. He raised a family, but struggled to get work projects to pan out, and despite being always friendly and personable he always struggled to make a living. In their many phone calls he admits to being depressed at times, and Karla admits to worrying that he has become the simplistic butt of a joke (cue a brief clip of Apu who runs the Kwik-E-Mart in The Simpsons) and an easy target to scapegoat.
Alongside his story, director Karla reflects on her own experiences as the daughter of Filipino/Indian immigrants, trying to make a life of her own in New York City, and now as a mother of two boys. And while the film never aims from grandstanding moments or profound comments, what it does quite wonderfully is act as a warm-hearted tribute to an immigrant life and a reflection on the importance of family kindness, and the importance of determining that people we care about know that we love them.
US, 2025, 83mins
Dir: Karla Murthy
Production: Greene Fort Productions, Independent Television Service, Firelight Media, Center for Asian American Media
International sales: Greene Fort Productions
Producers: Karla Murthy, Rajal Pitroda
Cinematography: Karla Murthy, Andrew Fredericks, Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana, Andy Sarjahani
Editor: Karla Murthy
Music: Bobak Lotfipour
