Trudeau's Other Children

Summary: Musicians Vineet Vyas, Mei Han and Asif Illyas are part of one of the greatest social experiments the world has seen: multiculturalism. Nearly 40 years ago, under the eye of visionary prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Canada began turning itself into the world's first truly multicultural state--a place where people from all nations could be at home. But the genesis for Trudeau's idea came decades earlier, when he was a young man travelling through the chaos of the post-war Middle East and Asia. Vineet Vyas is a renowned tabla player who splits his time between Canada and India. An accomplished traditional musician, zheng player Mei Han is also an audacious innovator and improviser. And Asif Illyas--born in Sri Lanka, raised in England, and living in Halifax--is frontman for boundary-breaking contemporary pop band Mir. In Trudeau's Other Children, award-winning filmmaker Rohan Fernando places the stories of Mei, Vineet and Asif in juxtaposition with archival footage and excerpts from Trudeau's journals. The result offers unique insights into the origins and practice of Canada's multicultural policy--and a film as powerful, layered and subtle as the best of their music.