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Title: Amreeka (2009)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Nisreen Faour | ... | Muna Farah | |
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Melkar Muallem | ... | Fadi Farah |
| Hiam Abbass | ... | Raghda Halaby | |
| Alia Shawkat | ... | Salma Halaby | |
| Yussuf Abu-Warda | ... | Nabeel Halaby (as Yussef Abu Warda) | |
| Joseph Ziegler | ... | Mr. Novatski | |
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Amer Hlehel | ... | Samer |
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Selena Haddad | ... | Lamis Halaby |
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Jenna Kawar | ... | Rana Halaby |
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Suheila Muallem | ... | Jamileh |
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Brodie Sanderson | ... | Matt |
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Andrew Sannie | ... | James |
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Daniel Boiteau | ... | Mike |
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Jeff Button | ... | Jason (as Jeff Sutton) |
| Miriam Smith | ... | Bank Employee | |
Muna, a single mother in Ramallah, has applied for a visa to the US. When it comes, her son Fadi, an excellent student, convinces her they should go. After an incident at customs begins their exile badly, they join Muna's sister and family in Illinois. Muna needs a job: although she has two degrees and 15 years' experience in banking, she settles for work at White Castle, telling the family her job's at a nearby bank. It's spring, 2003, and the US invades Iraq. While friends come from unlikely places, Fadi meets prejudice at school. How he'll respond to it and to American youth culture and how Muna will sort things out with her family are the rest of the story. Tragedy or hope? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
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"Amreeka" has, I would say, all the freshness and the weaknesses an indie movie comes with. Being about a family of Palestinian immigrants struggling to find their way in America and facing all kind of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab stereotypes, this movie cannot escape its own stereotypes. It is a movie that looks schematic in many of its moments. Not in all moments, let's be clear on this point. It is a movie breathing of sincerity and it has a certain pathos. However, sometimes it seems that it gathers all the bad guys on one side and the good guys on the other (you can guess who are the bad guys, and who are the good ones). And after all these, the end seems idyllic; they want to send the good message so to speak, only I'm wandering whether it happens like that also in real life.
Well, one can say that this movie is dealing with a reality which is by itself schematic. This is true: bigotry of any kind is always schematic (to name the least of its sins). The problem is that a movie has an artistic reality of its own, and this artistic reality must be convincing, regardless how schematic the depicted reality could be.
The great asset of this movie is the lead actress, Nisreen Faour. She creates an unforgettable personage, with passion, with honesty, with conviction and stamina. And she is so amazing that the whole movie is contaminated by her enthusiasm and good will.
Let me mention here also Hiam Abbass , a very good actress that I have also seen in many other movies (The Visitor, Munich, Paradise Now, The Syrian Bride).