Amreeka (2009) on Netflix
Muna Farah, a divorced Palestinian mother in Bethlehem, wins an American green card. She moves with her teenage son Fadi to Illinois, where her sister's family takes them in.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.0/103,790 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Muna works at a bank in Ramallah and crosses an Israeli checkpoint each day to reach the Bethlehem home she shares with her aging mother and her son Fadi. When a green card arrives through the lottery, she decides to leave for the United States with Fadi and stay with her sister Raghda, Raghda's physician husband Nabeel and their three children in Illinois. The family lands in the American Midwest soon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and at customs a box of cookies is taken from them; it held Muna's life savings. Without that money she looks for work, finds her degrees count for little, and takes a job at a White Castle while telling her family she was hired by the bank next door.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Amreeka (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Melkar Muallem, who was cast as the teenager Fadi, was the son of a Palestinian woman who helped cast Amreeka and wanted nothing to do with acting, since both his parents were actors and he cared only about computer science. Director Cherien Dabis begged him to audition, and once he did, he wanted the part.
- Cherien Dabis modeled the Palestinian American family on her own, making them Christian Palestinians. The kind high school principal came straight from her life: while she was in high school, serious accusations were leveled at her sister, who was saved by the principal's intervention.
- The West Bank scenes were shot on location in Ramallah, but the portion of the film set in Illinois was shot in Winnipeg. Cherien Dabis chose Canada over the United States because of tax incentives and because Manitoba offered provincial equity, which let her close the financing sooner.
- Amreeka was shot in a loose, semi-documentary style with the lightweight, portable Arri-416 camera, which allowed freedom of movement. Long takes and fluid camera moves were choreographed to the actors' blocking, and improvisation was used with the cast to get natural performances.
- The fast-food chain White Castle, where the heroine of Amreeka secretly takes a job, was an enthusiastic supporter of the film and contributed a truckload of real White Castle supplies.
- The Halaby family home in the film was shot in the actual house of a local Palestinian family from Ramallah that had three daughters close in age to the characters.
