Amreeka

An immigration drama as poignant as it is buoyant, Amreeka tracks the journey of a mother and son from the West Bank to residential Illinois. Filled out with fantastic performances and truly charming characters, Amreeka ’s already in great form, but the script’s frequent turns from the horrible to the truly lovely really make this film memorable and affecting. Its only roadblock is marketing. Amreeka isn’t the sort of story that fits tidily into a trailer so successful packaging will be difficult and will therefore make it harder to attract the audience this clever gem deserves. Its numbers won’t do it justice. It’s a great little picture.

Muna (Nisreen Faour) and her son Fadi (Melkar Muallem) leave an occupied Bethlehem to find greater opportunity in America. While Muna is reserved and nervous about the trip, Fadi is pursuant, lured by the promise of freedom and better educational environments. Muna’s sister, Raghda (the ever-impressive Hiam Abbass), welcomes her sister and nephew into her home. Muna seeks a job at a bank but regardless of her years of experience she can only find work at a White Castle. Meanwhile, racial tensions at Fadi’s school escalate until he finds himself the recipient of every kind of disciplinary attention. Both try to hide the minor indignities they suffer while wondering if trouble is native to Illinois or if the promise of a new life and liberty were illusions all along. However conflicted their context, the protections and comforts of family keep them warm at the end of the day.

The script’s strongest attribute is its gently poetic narrative parallels. As Fadi, stressed by the trials of assimilation, lashes out at his mother, Radha yells at her daughter Salma (Alia Shawkat) for acting like an American girl (“In this house, you are in Palestine!”). As Muna came to the states seeking greater opportunity, Radha, whose husband has recently endured racial threats, is eager to leave it. Salma shows Fadi American customs while Radha shows Muni all the Palestinian bakeries in driving distance. “Home” becomes a notion both in flux and in imagination, following suit are related concepts like “comfort” and “fitting in.” With so many concrete principles officially up for review, other issues seem in threat of revision as well: dignity among them.

Amreeka is a contemplative immigration story, one that spends more time with the intimate, human details than the larger political ones; and it’s altogether more relevant and resonant for it.

Distributor: National Geographic
Cast: Nisreen Faour, Yussuf Abu-Warda, Alia Shawkat, Hiam Abbass and Melkar Muallem
Director/Screenwriter: Cherien Dabis
Producer: Paul Barkin and Christina Piovesan
Genre: Drama; English and Arabic-language, with English Subtitles
Rating: PG-13 for brief drug use involving teens, and some language.
Running time: 96 min.
Release date: September 4 NY/LA, September 11 Exp, September 18 SF