gradyharp
This very moving 2009 film written and directed by Cherien Dabis could hardly be more timely, what with the current Immigration issues in filibuster in Washington and entry into the land of hope and liberty, so long a dream for many, now a country under close surveillance of individual privacy. This is a film, simple on the surface, but one with a significant message that would benefit all to watch and digest.The story opens in Palestine. After her husband divorces her for a slimmer woman, Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour) lives with her cranky mother and her excellent student son Fadi (Melkar Muallem) in an unnumbered house in Bethlehem. Frustrated by the constant need to cross through insulting armed checkpoints as Muna goes to her bank job and Fadi goes to school, they apply for a visa to escape the Palestinian problems with dreams of an exciting future in the promised land of small town Illinois where Muna's sister Raghda (the always brilliant Hiam Abbass) and her physician husband Nabeel (Yussuf Abu-Warda) live with their daughters. After one last treachery at customs (where Muna's life savings are confiscated) the two arrive in America. Muna is unable to find work in a bank but is secretly employed in a hamburger joint, befriended by fellow worker, high school dropout Matt (Brodie Sanderson). Fadi gets into school but is immediately ostracized by crude thoughtless students for being foreign and therefore a 'terrorist'. Meanwhile Raghda and Nabeel begin to sink into debt when Saddam Hussein is conquered in the Iraqi war and public sentiment is against all Arab speaking peoples. Fadi eventually fights back when the prejudiced students cause an accident for his mother and is arrested for assault, Muna's 'low class' employment is discovered, but when all looks grim the isolated family is befriended by a friendly Polish Jew educator Stan Novatski (Joseph Ziegler), by Matt, and by a worker in the bank that couldn't hire Muna. At least the spirit of a few can intervene to alter Muna and Farid's view of their new home.Writer/Director Dabis based this story on her family's memories of their lives in rural America during the first Iraq War. It is a potentially painful story to experience, but Dabis fills the dialogue with enough good natured humor that the point of the film is made without excessive preaching yet enough of the realities immigrants from the Middle East face to make the film unforgettable. Excellent performances from a fine cast. Grady Harp
Chad Shiira
Contrary to popular belief among the narrow-minded, not all Arabs are Muslims. Case and point: only one of the two female office workers, employees at a Palestinian bank, have their heads covered, in the opening scene of "Ameerka", a relevant film about the emigrants that makes some of us leery, still, eight years and counting after that fateful day in September. Even if Muna(Nisreem Faour) was a Muslim, and did wear a headscarf in compliance with Islamic law, would it make this divorced mother of one any less likable? Of course not. Not all Muslims are terrorists, contrary to popular belief. By default, "Ameerka" is a political movie, but it doesn't have to be one; it's the people that Muna and her son Fadi(Melkar Maleem) meet stateside, who make their presence a political matter. Despite having no outlying signifiers to correspond with their ethnicity, as if being Arab itself is supposed to denote one's religious affiliation in the first place, people prefigure their disposition, and treat them accordingly, with suspicion, with disregard.At the outset of "Ameerka", the small Palestinian family is made instantly relatable in a sequence that establishes how close-knit Mni and Fadi are, which completely transcends their "otherness". When the mother asks her son about his homework, having just picked the boy up from his private school, they could be American, but this parental concern is transformed by context and becomes a Palestinian scene, as their intimacy is interrupted by the car's arrival at a checkpoint, ending any semblance of normality, in which the Israeli soldier goes about his vehicle inspection. Once home, a house they share with the family matriarch, Muna quietly asks Fadi to get the tomatoes from the car, reining her temper in while Fadi's grandmother complains about her daughter's forgetfulness. Those tomatoes came from the produce market, a hole in the wall where Muna, recently divorced, had encountered her ex-husband's new wife, who is both younger and skinnier, and arguably, prettier, than her. When Muna boards the plane to America with her son, she's carrying around a broken heart, not a bomb.The Farahs go to Illinois. That's where Muna's sister Raghda(Hiam Abbass) and her family lives. It's also where Fadi got accepted to an expensive school. Blissfully unaware of her own Americanization, Raghda possesses an American's arrogance, talking about Palestine as if she still knew her. Muna knows. She knows it's better to be a foreigner than a prisoner. Muna corrects her older sister, who feels Palestinian because she shops at a Palestinian grocers, and can speak in her own native language without the cold stares of American housewives that greeted them at the supermarket. With enough English to get by, Muna goes job-hunting, and ends up serving burgers at White Castle, a last resort to unemployment, after being turned away by a host of prejudicial bank managers. The job embarrasses Muna, but she's a go-getter, so there's definitely a place for her in this country. When Muna's principal, a Polish-Jew(remember: Muna is Palestinian), drives her back to work(after being called in for a conference over Fadi's fisticuffs with his tormentor), he stays for lunch, after returning the handbag she left behind in his car. As he eats the famous White Castle fare, she mops, but then he invites her to sit with him(remember: the principal is Jewish), because she's entitled to be there, like she and Fadi are entitled to be in America. Muna has the right to dream of a better life. Living paycheck to paycheck is not good enough for her. She sells a weight-loss drink, and later in "Ameerka", she slips on the liquid, the handiwork of Fadi's tormentor, who knocks an open can off the White Castle counter. Flat on her back, that's where Muna might end up in this country, but she has a right to fail, and she has a right to get up, and try again.
hprockstar
This story follows a Middle-Eastern woman as she struggles living in an military-occupied West Bank. When she receives notice that she has been chosen in a lottery for a U.S. Green Card, she has to make the decision whether or not to uproot herself and her son for greener pastures. After making the decision to go, leaving her mother and brother behind, she realizes that life in Amreeka (America) is not all that she had dreamed it would be. Facing prejudice everywhere she turns, she makes other hard choices in trying to support her family...the son she brought to America with her and the relatives that she is staying with in the Midwest who are facing prejudice and struggling to make ends meet. In the end, this film reminds the viewer of the importance of family and the sacrifices we make for those we love.
