Arranged

Arranged is a wonderful Film Movement movie that tells the story of a Muslim woman, Nasira, and an Orthodox Jewish woman, Rochel, who both are going through the process of getting arranged marriages. They live in New York City with their families and teach at a public school, where they become friends. It's a beautiful, sweet, and funny story that depicts the challenges of keeping strong traditional values in contemporary times. Reflecting on the film, I realized that I kept anticipating some tragic or dramatic climactic event because that is what most movies now currently do. Arranged held you by the hand and portrayed truthfully and simply a story.

I recently also saw Amreeka, which tells the story of a Palestinian woman and her son who come to live in the U.S. with her sister. There she experiences the difficulty of being Arab in an American town just after the invasion of Iraq.