"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).

This is a great film about immigrating to North America as a divorced mother. The interactions between Mona (the mother) and Fadi (the son) are memorable; whether it be at the border at the occupied territories, in the US regarding his rebelliousness in school or confronting the attitude of US rural society. I just viewed this film and disagree that it is a stereotype. Maybe the reviewers have not taken a good look at "real life" in North America as a newly arrived immigrant.In this case, they are from occupied Palestine and immigrate exactly when the Bush administration declares war on Iraq. The town shuns them. No one is Iraqi, Palestine is occupied and war is on the way; so the son convinces her to leave when she receives unexpected news.A twist and tease every step of the way and the end is most unexpected!

Amreeka (the Arabic word for America) is a humorous and warm-hearted first feature from Cherien Dabis that follows a Palestinian woman, Muna (Nisreen Faour) and her sixteen-year-old son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem) from the checkpoints of the West Bank to the checkmates of racial animosity in a small town in Illinois near Chicago. Set in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War, Muna leaves Bethlehem because she desires a better life for her son and can no longer put up with overbearing Israeli police, the harangues of her elderly mother, and reminders of her philandering ex-husband. The opening sequence in which Muna is ecstatic about receiving her Green Card in the mail and says tearful goodbyes to her family on her way to America joyously captures the closeness of family and their caring for each other in a lighthearted manner.Unfortunately in the rest of the film things do not go as well for the young family. They have to deal with numerous incidents of overt and covert racism including bullying at school as they try to adjust to a new home and a new country. Things start off badly when Muna and Fadi are harassed for three hours at the airport by Israeli customs and a tin box filled with cookies and all of their savings are handed over by Fadi to customs officials. Fadi does not say anything to his mother about this (a most unlikely circumstance) and the loss is only discovered after the two arrive at the home of relatives in Illinois. From there, things go steadily south. Muna tries to get a job in her profession in a bank but is rejected by employers who look at all Arabs as potential terrorists.Ending up working at a burger joint, Muna conceals her employment from her relatives, pretending to work at a bank close to the restaurant, but her shame is apparent. Meanwhile Fadi is tormented by school bullies who call him Osama and her relatives begin to bicker over their increased expenses at the time when the family breadwinner, a physician (Yussef Abu Warda), is losing clients because of his Arab appearance. While people need to be reminded of the hurt of racism and the Arabs contribution to the world, Amreeka offers one contrived subplot after another in which Americans are caricatures of either hate-filled racists or Christ-like saviors like Mr. Novatski (Joseph Ziegler), Fadi's principal (who happens to be Jewish).What could have been an excellent opportunity to explore the problems of assimilation or the treatment of minorities instead becomes a litany of clichés. There is no mention of 9-11, issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the problem of bullying in schools, and the possibility of involving teachers, school officials, or even the neighborhood church in helping the immigrant family to cope are not examined. While Amreeka has moments of charm and likability and the performances are excellent, the exercise quickly becomes a big screen version of "As the World Turns", doomed by an overly simplistic approach in which victimization substitutes for cooperation in finding solutions.

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.