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Zogby: At Last, a Film That Tells the True Arab Immigrant Story
The immigrant experience in America is a topic rich in meaning. For me it is personal, since my understanding has been informed both by my family’s story and my work of several decades.
Because America has a complex and conflicted relationship with immigrants, being both inclusive and generous while at the same time wary and unwelcoming of newcomers, the experiences of the country’s diverse ethnic communities has been the subject of great art. The Irish, Italian, Jewish and Latino experience has long been conveyed in film and literature, not only defining for other Americans the story of these communities, but also revealing aspects of the American character.
The Arab American experience has been less told and is therefore less familiar. That is, until now.
The remarkable film Amreeka is the first feature-length work by the young writer-director Cherien Dabis. Brought up in Ohio and Jordan by Palestinian-Jordanian immigrant parents, Dabis is the first of her family to be born in the US. The movie is not only her feature debut, but an introduction to the Arab immigrant experience in post-9/11 America.
Amreeka tells the story of Muna, a divorced Palestinian woman from Bethlehem. As the film opens, we follow Muna home from work, through oppressive and abusive checkpoints, past the wall and suffocating settlements. Muna is not only tired of all this, she is fearful for the future and safety of her teenage son, Fadi.
News that she has secured an immigrant visa to the US gives Muna the opportunity she has craved for a better life. Their departure from home and family is wrenching, but Muna and Fadi are hopeful as they embark on the voyage that is to begin their new life.
Muna’s dreams, however, will not be so easily fulfilled. Her experience with US Immigration and Customs, marked by ignorance and bureaucratic hostility, resembles in some ways the treatment at the checkpoints back home. She weathers all of this and finally leaves the airport, where she is embraced by her sister’s family, who preceded her to America more than a decade before.
As luck would have it, Muna has come to the US at the start of the Iraq War. Anti-Arab sentiment is raging in some quarters. Her brother-in-law, a doctor, has lost patients because of the backlash, and her sister is quickly losing patience with the hatred and fear that mars their lives.
Though educated and with experience in banking, Muna is unable to find work in her field, but knowing that she must become independent, continues to search for employment, finally finding a job at a local fast-food restaurant.
Tensions build as Muna, ashamed, tries to hide her place of work from her son and sister; as Fadi deals with bullying bigots at school; and as her sister’s family begins to unravel in response to the pressures of the war, and the enormous hardships resulting from anti-Arab bias. Through it all, Muna not only survives, but remains hopeful and thankful for each kind gesture from strangers and new-found friends who come to her assistance in ways small and not so small.
Dabis handles her characters lovingly, making each one real and engaging – and through them a love story, of sorts, emerges. Like most children of immigrants, Dabis grew up in two worlds, loving both – the life of her family and her heritage, and the life they found in America. These two worlds are estranged at times, but they define Dabis. And she draws on both to tell her story. Her film is, in a real sense, an effort to reconcile them.
Through Dabis’s art, Americans will learn not only about the Palestinian experience under occupation, but will come to see their own country, through Muna’s eyes, as a generous land, full of promise, but a land that is flawed as well.
The film – partly funded by Imagenation, the film venture of Abu Dhabi Media Company, also owner of The National – had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was critically acclaimed, and then won an award at Cannes. It has just opened in the US, is currently showing in more than 30 cities and will be opening in 10 more this month. The critics are enthralled: The New York Times called it “one of the most accomplished recent films” about the immigrant experience, and the Los Angeles Times said it was “a film of surpassing quality”.
Amreeka will soon be opening across the Middle East, and is expected in the Gulf towards the end of the year. I urge you to see it. You will learn and you will love the experience.
That it has been praised by the critics and awarded at festivals itself tells a story. My hope is that this wonderful film inspires more young Arab American artists to tell our story – so that through art, our experience will be better known and Americans will see what is to be loved about this country, but also what also must change to make it better.
James J Zogby
Huffington Report