Her name is Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour). She is in her early 40s, she is Palestinian, she has an Americanized teenage son, she lives in the West Bank, she is overweight, she recently lost her husband to a younger and thinner woman, she works at a bank, she is middle class, she daily deals with Israeli military power, her future is fast running out. Suddenly, something special happens: She wins the green-card lottery and has the chance to move to America with her Americanized son and start a new life. This is the beginning of Amreeka, a film directed by a talented Arab-American woman, Cherien Dabis, who based much of the story (which is set in rural Illinois during the start of the Iraq war in 2003) on her own experiences. The narrative of the immigrant (culture clashes and so on) is not new, but it is far from exhausted. The narrative of the immigrant is still rich and enigmatic, and it presents lots of artistic and political opportunities for the art of cinema. This will not always be the case. One day, the immigrant's narrative will be old because the world will no longer have immigrants or, better yet, or put another way, because everyone will be an immigrant (that is a discussion for another time). But for now, in this time of borders and global economic pressures, immigrants like Muna (their courage, their desires) are the real heroes of cinema. Amreeka also has a great ending. Harvard Exit, opens Sept 25.