I had the great pleasure of watching an engaging documentary, ‘A Lot Like You’, over the weekend at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival.

The aspect of the film that resonated most with me personally was the way it approached cultural identity. It touched on so many important cross-cultural issues in the exploration of just one character, including being a mixed-race individual, being an immigrant in America from a vastly different culture, being a first generation American, and exploring your roots in another country and culture vastly different from your own experiences in America.

It is so essential for people to keep exploring and talking about these issue in highly visible mediums such as film, and for those works to be exposed to as large an audience as possible. The only way to get rid of prejudice born out of ignorance is for people to connect with people from all different backgrounds and cultures and to begin to see pieces of themselves or people they love in them.

Films like ‘A Lot Like You’ are the future of making cross-cultural exchange and understanding available and relevant to the masses. Now we just have to figure out how to replicate the viral success of Kony 2012 with sensitive works of art like this film, and we will move closer as a global community.