Canada thrives on having a reputation of being a multifaceted country of many heritages that co-exist. What stood out for me in Short Cuts Canada Programmes 2 is the investigation of how immigrants express their individuality upon settling in a foreign land, and the struggles that befall those who don't feel a sense of belonging in their immediate communities.

 75 El Camino is coyly set in Sarnia's Chemical Valley, where director Sami Khan grew-up.  The fate of couple Travis and Marianne becomes split into two possible paths when they lose everything they have except for a shiny Chevy El Comino. Homeless, they are faced with holding on to this car as a token of their more prosperous past, or the chance to abandon the life they once had to break-free and travel on un-chartered adventures. The idea of a settled home is literally snatched as a present reality from the isolated couple, resulting in them being left to face some difficult challenges.

Snow Hides the Shade of Fig Trees (La Neige Cache l'ombre des Figuiers) is a touching story of 6 immigrant men that work together and deliver flyers. Though very different in appearance from one another, the common thread that binds these men together in a brotherhood is the nostalgia for their homelands. Touching and sad, the story pushes the reality of struggle and depression that many immigrants feel once displaced from their hereditary cultures.

Director Ryan Mullins, on the other hand, highlights remoteness from modern living and knowledge in his thoughtful documentary. Volta pieces together a larger understanding of the separation felt in many remote areas of less developed nations from the larger well-developed world. Rural Ghana is the setting of this passionate examination of the continual battle to balance the old world traditions within the new world order. Hope comes in the forum of using Ghana's abandoned theatres being used as a gathering spot to communicate ideas and information that would otherwise be inaccessible.

I have often pondered and written about my own diaspora as an East Indian-African-British-Canadian and these shorts all manage to show that this is a struggle that is universally faced by immigrants. Together these works are a powerful appeal for human empathy and recognition of the challenges that face the preservation of cultural diversites world-wide, not only in Canada.