This Weekend’s Film Festival – Immigration Nation

Immigration is a complex issue with its larger meaning representing something different to each person. This Weekend's Film Festival looks at the issue through film. These five films address the issue from the immigrants' point of view. There's the story of a cheerful Senegalese cabdriver. A Palestinian mother brings her son to America for a better life. An Irish man moves his whole family to the States for a chance at stardom. A poor factory worker becomes a drug mule in order to get a trip to the U.S. A young woman meets a violent gang member on her journey across Latin America on top of a train.

GOODBYE SOLO is the best film of 2009. Solo, played with such effortless energy by Souleymane Sy Savane, is an immigrant from Senegal, who drives a cab, but dreams of becoming a flight attendant. He is the constant optimist who sees the America Dream as something bigger than his wife does. She wants him to settle and start his own cab company. One night he picks up an old man named William, played with subtle gruff by Red West, who is willing to pay Solo $1,000 to take him to a remote mountain in 10 days. He never speaks of a return trip. Solo spends the next 10 days trying to convince William to change his mind. The hip-hop talking immigrant and an aging biker have little in common, but they become friends. Director Ramin Bahrani understands these characters fully. The force of Solo's personality drives the story. When it comes to immigrants, questions arise. Would an American-born cabbie try to stop William's deadly plan, or just take his money? Is it less about where Solo came from and more about who he is? Solo's wife is Latino and looks at him as a procrastinator. Does the ease of American culture promotes this or is Solo just a dreamer by nature? As I said in my original review, "In the way the story unfolds, the film makes us feel what its like to be its characters." The film allows us to walk in someone else's shoes and our feet fit naturally because it crafts its characters so well.

Set at the start of the Iraq War, AMREEKA shows the difficulties of Muna and Fadi Farah as they emigrate from the West Bank to Illinois. They move in with her sister Raghda (Hiam Abbass) and her husband Nabeel (Yussuf Abu-Warda), who is losing patients at his medical practice due to his ethnicity. Muna, played by the charming Nisreen Faour, has two degrees, but can only get a job at a White Castle. Fadi (Melkar Muallem) doesn't have the right clothes and classmates joke that the quiet boy is going to blow up the school. His cousin Salma (Alia Shawkat) defends him and tries to help him fit in. Director Cherien Dabis taps into many universal experiences that anyone who has moved to a new town has experienced. The cultural differences are what make the circumstances more extreme. Muna and Fadi exchanged problems in the Middle East for problems in the United States. Raghda longs to go back, but Muna tells her that it's not like she remembered. Soon enough Muna and Fadi learn that America isn't as wonderful as she dreamed it would be. However, there is one difference – in America there is hope for something better. For Muna and Fadi they have to balance between their new home and their home culture. As I said in my original review, "So many Americans complain about immigrants not assimilating into the American society. With the way the immigrants are treated by Americans and our culture, can you blame them for not doing so even if they wanted to?"

Like Cherien's AMREEKA, Jim Sheridan's IN AMERICA is an immigrant story informed by the filmmaker's own personal experiences. Sheridan wrote the film with his daughters Naomi and Kirsten based on their own move to New York when he was trying to become an actor. In the film, Paddy Considine plays Johnny Sullivan, an aspiring actor, who moves his family to America after the tragic death of his son Frankie. Sheridan lost a brother named Frankie. Samantha Morton plays Johnny's wife Sarah, who struggles to take care of their daughters Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger) under poor conditions in Hell's Kitchen. These new immigrants begin to build a friendship with another immigrant, Mateo Kuamey, played with power by Oscar-nominee Djimon Hounsou, a Nigerian artist who is suffering from HIV. This moving drama is filled with sentiment, but never overplays it. It knows what it's like to be poor, a newcomer to a country and suffering from grief. As I said in my original review, "It’s so amazing the emotional residence that this film creates with scenes you think you’ve seen before, but have never been handled the same way. And certainly never been handled with such emotional truth." The Sullivans and Mateo have found a unique common bond in their pain and as newcomers to a foreign country.

When most people think of the immigration issue in America, they think of illegal Latino immigration. The two closing films this week look at this aspect of the issue. Joshua Marston's MARIA FULL OF GRACE follows Maria Alvarez, played by Catalina Sandino Moreno in a career-making Oscar-nominated performance, a 17-year-old rose de-thorner who decides to become a drug mule in order to get a trip to America where her sister lives and to provide money to her poor family. Her job is terrible and one can see the pull of breaking the law by smuggling drugs into the U.S. by swallowing cocaine-filled latex pellets. Maria's story falls between those of veteran mule Lucy (Guilied Lopez) and her naïve friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega). Lucy is like her wise mentor through this harrowing experience, while Blanca's sketchy behavior is a constant threat to her safety. As I said in my original review, "The film details the great risks these girls take and shows the various ways things can go wrong, especially when one of the pellets breaks inside the girls. These young girls don’t have much and truly risk everything for something better." As a comment on illegal immigration, Maria's story underlines how personal each story is to the person who comes to America illegally.

Cary Fukunaga's SIN NOMBRE deals directly with the extents Latino immigrants will go to come to America and a chance for a better life. Teenaged Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is finally old enough to attempt the journey north from Honduras. Her father Horacio (Gerardo Taracena) was deported back and is attempting to get back to New Jersey where his family lives. They will endure the elements riding hundreds of miles across Latin America as they dodge immigration agents along the way to make it to the border where they must wade across dangerous waters. So why would they do this? In the film's parallel storyline, Willy (Edgar Flores) struggles with his commitment to his gang. After he breaks a cardinal rule of the gang, he ends up on the train with Sayra where he becomes her protector. But once a member of MS 13, you're always a member and the network of members all the way up Latin America is now hunting for him. To prove himself, 12-year-old recruit El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) now heads north to kill Willy, his former mentor, as well. As I said in my original review of this powerful drama, "[The immigrants] risk their lives for the opportunities many U.S. citizens take for granted. If they stay in their countries of origin, there’s always the gangs."

To join the debate or just watch some of the best films of 2009 and the past few years simply head to the video store, update the Netflix queue, head over to HelloMovies.com to find streaming sites, check out Zap2It.com for TV listings or help out the site by purchasing the films on DVD at the links below.