Screening and Discussion: Amreeka, with Director Cherien Dabis

Screening and Discussion: Amreeka, with Director Cherien Dabis
Mon, August 17, 2009 8:30 pm at Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center

Special New York Screening at Lincoln Center
Cherien Dabis, USA/Canada, 2009; 96m
Tickets are available at: http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/amreeka.html

Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Center Plaza - 165 West 65th Street (bet. Amsterdam & Broadway, Upper Level)
 New York, NY 10023-6595
(212) 875-5600 
http://www.filmlinc.com/about/contact.htm

"Amreeka 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 small town Illinois. 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. Told with heartfelt humor by writer-director Cherien Dabis in her feature film debut, 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."

National Geographic Entertainment will release Amreeka in September 2009. Amreeka is a First Generation Films-Alcina Pictures-Buffalo Gal Pictures/Eagle Vision Media Group Production, presented by E1 Entertainment in association with Levantine Entertainment, Manitoba Film & Music, Rotana Studios and Showtime Arabia.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, National Geographic Entertainment and Arte East in association with Alwan for the Arts, Sundance Institute, American Jews for a Just Peace and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

About the Director:

"Amreeka is a film that writer/director Cherien Dabis very much needed to make. It’s a personal story that draws on her own memories of growing up with her Palestinian/Jordanian family in rural Ohio. Named one of Variety’s 'Ten Directors to Watch' in 2009, Dabis makes her feature writing and directorial debut with Amreeka, which premiered to both audience and critical acclaim in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The film went on to open the Museum of Modern Art and Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual New Director’s/New Films series in New York and will have its international premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight in May. Dabis’s original script was selected to participate in the 2005 Sundance Middle East Screenwriter’s Lab, IFP/LA Director’s Lab, Los Angeles Film Festival’s Fast Track program and 2007 Berlinale Co-Production Market.

At Tribeca All Access in 2007, Dabis was honored with the first ever L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Vision Award, and last year she won the Renew Media/Tribeca Film Institute’s Media Artist Fellowship, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Also a television writer and co-producer, Dabis worked on Showtime Network’s ground-breaking, original hit series The L Word for three seasons."