“AmericanEast” is a timely, poignant drama about Arab-Americans living in post-9/11 Los Angeles. The story examines long-held misunderstandings about Arabic and Islamic culture, and puts a human face on a segment of the U.S. population whom most Americans know nothing about, but who today are of particular interest to them, either from curiosity or suspicion. The story highlights the pressures under which many Arab-Americans now live by focusing on the points-of-view of three main characters.

I.

Mustafa (Sayed Badreya) is a widowed Egyptian immigrant and the owner of Habibe’s Café, a popular hang-out for Los Angelenos with Middle Eastern backgrounds. He is devoted to providing his children with a moral upbringing despite the pressures of contemporary American urban life. He also finds himself cast in the role of protector to his unwed sister Salweh, for whom, by family and tribal custom, he is responsible for finding a traditional suitor. But his respect for tradition comes up against his own aspirations to adapt to the American Dream when he decides to open a new restaurant with a Jewish partner – his friend Sam (Tony Shalhoub). This “unholy alliance” is unpopular amongst the habitués of his café and the insular Arab community in which Mustafa resides. It is one of several personal points of tension that gradually build against the backdrop of larger, national events affecting the Arab-American community and lead to the explosive denouement of the story.

II.

Salwah, Mustafa’s sister (Sarah Shahi), must also reconcile her traditional values and familial obligations with new American realities. Although she is grateful to Mustafa for bringing her to America when she was young, and allowing her to pursue an education, conflict arises between them when Mustafa insists upon fulfilling his duty of finding her a traditional, arranged-marriage partner from Egypt. The arrival of this arranged suitor, her older cousin Saber (Al Faris), throws her life into turmoil and makes her question her own beliefs and faith. Secretly, she is attracted to an American, Dr. John Westerman (Tim Guinee), a young and attractive non-Muslim. Any caution she feels toward him, however, is thrown to the wind by the abrupt arrival of Saber and a possible impending marriage that she does not want. She becomes sorely tempted to experience intimacy with the young doctor outside of marriage, a taboo. While she undergoes this internal conflict, her suitor Saber is staying as a guest at the home she shares with Mustafa and his children, and the incompatibility between this traditional man, her future “husband,” and Mustafa’s Americanized family is another source of irritation adding to the mounting tensions underlying the story.

III.

Mustafa’s friend Omar (Kais Nashif) is a struggling actor and Habibi’s Cafe regular, a young Egyptian man who supports his dream of becoming a movie star by working as a part-time cab driver for Mustafa’s ragged, one-car taxi company. Because of his Middle Eastern looks and accent, however, he is constantly cast in the role of a terrorist in American TV shows that portray only a shallow understanding of Arabs and their culture. When an opportunity for a non-racially-designated role arrives, Omar feels his chance for success -- to be seen as an actor first and not a Muslim -- has finally arrived. It is the break he has been waiting for on many levels: a chance at the financial freedom necessary to marry and support his pregnant American girlfriend Kate (Amanda Detmer), and a chance for him, and his future child, to be embraced as an American, in the same way that he has embraced America.
But misunderstandings and prejudices related to his Arabic background conspire against him once again and his opportunity is lost, pushing Omar to make a drastic, unreasoned decision that sets off a chain of events leading to a violent conclusion that affects the lives and conflicts of all the other characters – an explosive reminder of the simmering pressures under which Muslims live in the United States today. Will their American Dreams be shattered by a climate of distrust and suspicion, or will their hopes and aspirations be embraced by their fellow Americans?
 

Director’s Note – Hesham Issawi

"AmericanEast” comes from feelings of strong anger about the way things are, which I have tried to bring into focus and tie together with intersecting human stories -- primarily because I don’t want to be simply nihilistic. Never, I thought, would a personal story about Middle Eastern people in the U.S. would work, but 9/11 made it work for me, and the result was the storyline and ultimately the film for “AmericanEast.”

It all began a couple of years ago when Sayed Badreya and I had a meeting with Peter Farrelly to discuss certain ideas and, specifically, another script which we were then developing. During that discussion, Peter looked at Sayed and said to him, “You should make a movie about yourself.” I replied to Peter, “But who would want to watch it; people in Hollywood don’t like us.” I think he was hurt by that remark, and I never forget the way he looked at me -- there was something very deep and profound in his eyes. He said, “It’s not that they hate you; they just don’t know you.” This was like an epiphany, and I went back home and pulled out a couple of scripts I had written in film school, or co-wrote with other writers, and the journey of “AmericanEast” started. We wrote the first draft in 3 months. It’s the combination of 3 or 4 scripts that I wrote or have been involved with since I graduated from film school in 1996.

I always look for anomalies when I am writing or thinking of a movie. In “AmericanEast,” I found this in the character and dialogue for Murad. He is born in America but he is as angry as any man in the streets of Cairo, Baghdad, Jordan or Beirut. I grew up watching many Egyptian and American movies, and I noticed in American movies that people always swear -- they always use the word “fuck.” But in Egyptian movies, the characters never swear. They get angry, frustrated, but they never swear. I never understood this. In Egypt, people swear all the time -- in the streets, in buses. My dad is the champion of swearing and he’s a scientist, a professional man. So I always felt there was something fake about Egyptian movies. They’re not real and don’t present reality. Consequently, during the writing of “AmericanEast,” we talked about going over-board with Murad’s character, because he represents a certain reality among Arabs that has never been exposed on-screen before -- the modern reality of Arab Muslims and Christians and their justified anger and faded dreams.

Likewise, Omar’s character represents my generation – the generation that loved America, believed in American idealism, but felt that America turned its back on them. I grew up in the 80s in Egypt, when everything was American -- music, movies -- even the way we talked was similar to characters from American films. But fast-forward 15 years and the current generation is militant and anti-American. Nowadays, to speak English is to speak the language of the infidel. What happened? Omar represents that American dream of my youth, and the hope that has now been killed. He needs someone to listen to him, a chance to show his talent, but he is denied it. The killing of Omar represents the death of the dream of a generation. Maybe for the next generation things will be better. But for Omar, the dream is over.

As Omar is the heart of the film, and Murad it’s anger, Mustafa, the owner of Habibi’s Café, is at the center -- the man who tries to patch things up, to compromise, in order to survive. He is the immigrant who wants to live quietly. But outside forces, politics, and social prejudices don’t allow it. He is a man who can’t forget his past and is insecure about his future. He has to choose between his motherland and the new country he lives in, which likewise causes the entrapment of his sister, Salwah.

We meet Salwah in the middle of her life story, where she has to stand up for herself and defy tradition. But she has to find herself first. She embarks on her own journey and starts a short relationship with an American man. The relationship is doomed from the beginning, but Salwah needs this little detour in her journey in order to know her destination and find her individualism and simply say “no” to her brother.” The way we shot Salwah is very different from the rest of the characters. We often see her through mirrors. We see her in one shot staring at chimes, but we hear her voice coming from off-screen, from another room. This is because Salwah has no geography, no space, no land. She is emotionally dislocated. I had a great deal of fun with her character and I wish there were more of her.

During production, questions of East meeting West, Islam versus western civilization, understanding Middle Eastern politics, became a part of our everyday lives. While we were filming, Israel was bombing southern Lebanon for a month. Discussions that happened every day during breakfast helped ignite both intimacy and, I have to admit, sometimes distance between the cast and the crew. But it gave the production great value. Real life and filming merged. Often, it was difficult not to lose sight of what was important for the film, to focus on the fictional story and achieve some kind of distance from reality, to find the right tone and filter out what was not essential. Ultimately, this film is about understanding and misunderstanding, and about the difficulty of overcoming strongly-held, fixed ideas toward Middle Eastern culture. My goal was to show what happens when different cultures and mentalities collide, when dreams and realities confront each other.

In visualizing “AmericanEast,” I talked with Michael Wojciechowski, the cinematographer, about the fluidity of the camera. I felt the movement of the camera should bring out the psychology of the scene and the emotion of the character. My interest is in creating a mode of cinematic narrative where camera work, lighting, and actor movement are all unleashed to assume an authority to tell a straightforward linear narrative. It is a collaborative effort where no one can foresee the outcome with any kind of accuracy.

I had the intention of seeing this film through as uncompromising a lens as possible. I wanted to get to the heart of things and capture all the hidden thoughts and feelings that the West carries against the Middle East and vice versa without any judgment. I wanted to paint a picture of what's happening, show the truth, and be committed to the truth rather than understanding it. There's something preposterous and pretentious about the contemporary, everyday trend of trying to analyze people from the Middle East. I see it in the newspapers and with the modern Orientalists, yet many have never walked on the streets of the Middle East, taken a bus, drank from the Nile, nor slept in mud houses with no electricity. Yet they feel they are capable of judging people’s lives.

I always ask myself what would have happened if I had never traveled to America, nor ever found cinema, my true home, country and love. Would I be one of those guys running in the streets of Cairo shouting “Death to America” and burning its flag? I don’t know the answer.

I read this poem once from Rumi where he writes, “Beyond the notion of right and wrong, there is a garden/My dear friend will you meet me there?” The garden in “AmericanEast” is the last scene in the movie, a dreamy place where good things can happen – or may happen. Where hope seems possible. Where co-existence can occur. But it is not enough to wish for these things, we must work toward them. I know for a fact that the producers, the crew and the actors made this movie as a labor of love. We all needed to make a statement and luckily we found that expression in “AmericanEast.” In doing so, we hope that we have begun to build a bridge, utilizing the visual medium of film, to bring cultures together and create better understanding of our mutual humanity. Film can be an important instrument for social change, for bringing greater awareness to serious issues, and for shaping national and sometimes international dialogue about a variety of subject matters. If “AmericanEast” has succeeded in making one or two Americans think or feel differently about those people among them who come from my part of the world, then I believe that all of us involved in this movie can feel we have accomplished something worthwhile.