Shop Dada - The Cornershop That Built Us

A filmmaker revisits his grandfather’s corner shop to uncover migration, racism and sacrifice behind a British South Asian stereotype.

Pravin Mistry, a Gujarati man displaced from Uganda, rebuilt his life through corner shops across Britain. Decades later, his grandson Darshan Gajjar retraces that journey, stepping back into the shop where it all started. South Asian corner shops are woven into the fabric of British life, but rarely heard are the stories behind the counter. Through the shop's history, Gajjar pieces together what these businesses truly represented for the families behind them: not a stereotype, but stories of creativity, perseverance and love. Drawing on beautiful archive footage shot by Mistry himself, The Cornershop That Built Us moves between experiences of racism in the 1980s and today's rising hostility toward racialised communities, finding in his family’s experience a wider picture of migration, class and resilience across generations.