Amreeka

Fashionable political-correctness is so rampant in recent films like Wayne Kramer’s self-righteous immigrant saga Crossing Over, Tom McCarthy’s saccharine immigrant saga The Visitor and Julia Loktev’s suicide-bomber saga Day Night Day Night, that I kept expecting Amreeka’s immigrant drama—a debut feature by writer-director Cherien Dabis—to be similarly preachy, doomy and obnoxious. (Even its title, an Arabic pun, scarily suggests a 21st-century version of Kafka’s Amerika.) Instead, Amreeka hops over every one of its predictable, carefully laid-out hurdles. Amreeka isn’t great, but it’s a relief when a movie that touches on America’s post-9/11 unease regarding Muslims and the Arab world isn’t full of condemnation. Read more