The production directed by Cherien Dabis follows the journey of a Palestinian family seeking to reconstruct their lives far from the Middle East, in a tale where migration, identity and dignity are at the heart of the story. It is a story that remains relevant.
Sergio Berrocal
It is a film that simply must be seen. It is the contemporary enactment of an ordeal staged and sponsored by modern Rome, with branches in Tel Aviv and other places in the world where merely living almost always means facing death. An ordeal featuring Palestinians as humble shepherds and Israelis as Praetorians from Ancient Rome, with Herod and his advisors.
An ordeal which in “Amreeka” begins right in Bethlehem, the beginning of everything, from where you can spot the marvellous wall that the Israelis have built to avoid “the passage of terrorists”.
Muna (Alia Shawkat, oasis of happiness) lives there and is neither a terrorist nor anything like it. Her only concern is growing good tomatoes for dinner. Fed up with the sinister checkpoints that the Israelis have reinstated to make it even harder for Palestinians to breathe, she decides to leave for the United States with her sister.
She wants to keep her son safe, but upon arriving in the land of opportunity she realises that they are still Palestinians, eternally suspected of all kinds of terrorism in the world. Muna endures her own personal ordeal between working in a burger joint which, in her imagination and that of her nearest and dearest, becomes a bank (“I have three degrees and I speak two and a half languages”), and a will to survive that can conquer anything.
In this film, with a marvellous soundtrack, Alia Shawkat is a plump woman who strides across screen, occupying it, hijacking it and winning you over. She is a splendid, vibrant and idealistic woman who has no more truth than living. She ends up putting her own signature on the film when, at ninety minutes of screen time, she gathers all the people that she loves, and that love her, together in a restaurant on the outskirts of Chicago.
Far from the Middle East, at this last supper of innocents, there is no Judas. A new Jewish Jesus, friendly and smiling, presides over it as a guarantee of imminent happiness which the two Palestinian refugees could achieve one day. If they are lucky, of course. PL
(Translated by Donna Davison – Email: donna_davison@hotmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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