thanks to the philadelphia film society, mrs. noz and i went to see a preview of amreeka (imdb). the film tells the story of mona, a single mother who moves from bethlehem to rural illinois with her son fadi. there mona and fadi face several challenges, both from being a stranger in a strange land and from the anti-arab bigotry triggered by 9/11 and the iraq war.
it's a fairly good-natured movie with a "why can't we all get along?" message. the biggest problems with the film were that some of the characters, especially the bigots who serve as the film's villains, were little more than two dimensional stereotypes. there were also a few contrivances (like mona's one american friend turning out to be jewish) and some of the examples of bigotry in the film were a little over the top and didn't seem to be very realistic to me.
then again... the writer/director cherien dabis was there for a Q and A after the screening. i usually think those things are a waste of time. but this one ended up being pretty interesting. maybe that's because the film is a retelling of her own family's history, when her aunt came to the u.s. during the gulf war, moving in with dabis and her family in small town ohio. apparently in real life things happened that were even more extreme than what i thought was over-the-top and unrealistic in the film.
so what do i know? people in the majority often don't see the full extent of what minorities go through. maybe that's the case with this. and, despite its problems, it's still basically an enjoyable film. plus, as ursula lindsey points out, there haven't been many films about the arab-american experience during the war on terror. "amreeka" might not be the ideal film to address the issue, but at least it makes the effort.
