AMREEKA
The Story:
A Palestinian single mom Muna (Nisreen Faour) and her teenage son arrive in rural Illinois to escape a life of oppression, only to face the fallout from America's war on Iraq.
West Bank, just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, with divorced Muna's discovery of the green card that will take her and 16-year-old Fadi (Melkar Muallem) away from their daily drive through menacing checkpoints to Jerusalem. More of a similar nature, however, accompanies Muna and her son at the Chicago airport, where the modest seed money she had naively wrapped in a cookie tin gets confiscated by customs agents, leaving her broke upon arrival at the suburban home of her sister Raghda (Hiam Abbass), married with three kids.
Thickly accented Muna tries and fails to land a bank management job similar to the one she held back home, leading her to take work at a White Castle and struggle to keep it secret from her sister and son, and laying the groundwork for a gentle, not-quite romance between Muna and Mr. Novatski (Joseph Ziegler) the Jewish principal of Fadi’s school.
Though Muna and her family are both a culture without a state and strangers in a strange land, they learn that the meaning of home transcends borders, and love needs no checkpoints.
Starring:
Nisreen Faour, Alia Shawkat, Hiam Abbass, Jenna Kawar, Melkar Muallem, Selena Haddad
Directed By:
Cherien Dabis
Release:
2009
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