AMREEKA

Order & Box Office Information
Box Office: 440-366-4040 or 800-995-5222 x4040
http://https://tickets.lorainccc.edu/public/




Friday, January 8, 2010 (7:30 pm - 9:15 pm) 2009 (PG-13) 97 min. USA/some subtitles
Director: Cherian Dabis
Cast: Nisreen Faour, Melkar Muallem, Hiram Abbass

AMREEKA (the Arabic word for America) chronicles the adventures of Muna, a single mother who leaves the West Bank with Fadi, her teenage son, with dreams of an exciting future in the promised land of a small town in Illinois. Muna is a non-religious Palestinian, which makes her an outsider on both sides of the Israeli checkpoint she has to pass daily on the way to her job as a bank accountant. When against all odds, she wins the U.S. lottery for green cards, they leave for a new life that is more, and less, than they expected. In America, as her son navigates high school hallways the way he used to move through military checkpoints, the indomitable Muna scrambles together a new life cooking up falafel burgers as well as hamburgers at the local White Castle. To quote film critic Roger Ebert: "Amreeka isn't a story of American prejudice, but of American reality, the good and the bad. When Fadi is bullied, fights back and is called into the principal's office, his mother sheds her White Castle uniform and hurries to the school, deeply concerned. Here she finds the Jewish principal not only sympathetic but responding to her own warmth and charisma. He wonders if she'd like to join him for coffee..." Told with heartfelt humor, AMREEKA is a universal journey into the lives of a family of immigrants and first-generation teenagers caught between their heritage and the new world in which they now live and the bittersweet search for a place to call home.

"Funny and playful...Beautifully written and directed...Made with a keen eye and a light touch, AMREEKA excels at finding the warmth and humanity in a difficult situation" - Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"...There's an authenticity to Amreeka that can't be faked...a bright warmth of storytelling that announces the filmmaker as a talent to watch." - Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY