There have been many films made about the trials and tribulations of immigration. The topic is particularly fertile for fiction in that stories about immigration are often attended by a great deal of drama and transformation. Dirty Pretty Things takes a tonally curious look at the marginal existences of undocumented immigrants, and is part of a substantial canon of films about the experience of immigration.
From The Godfather to Avalon to Maria Full of Grace to I Can't Sleep, films about immigration often look at the experience of displacement and integration, in alternately lighthearted and profound ways. In an article about some especially affecting films about immigration for BFI, Manish Agarwal writes of the genre, "Populist nativism ignores the humanitarian reasons for–and economic benefits of–global movement, plus, more fundamentally, the fact that diaspora communities become inextricably woven into and strengthen the fabric of whichever society they call home."
In this way, films about immigration not only serve entertainment purposes, but they also serve to illuminate the experience of migrant life to a viewer who might not otherwise understand its struggles. Movies about immigration show the lives of those who are otherwise disenfranchised by their status, pushing their sacrifices and contributions into the center of dramatic scenarios.
