Green

When Mustafa, the Producer, first presented me with the story he wanted to tell, I was immediately drawn to this world where men from different parts of the Middle East and Northern Africa occupied a clandestine apartment in New York City. Each from a different geography with a unique culture, unable to communicate in their native tongue, even within this loose community, and yet to the outside world they were the same thing – an immigrant and a threat. Despite my excitement, I questioned whether I was the right person to tell this story, as a woman with no ties to that part of the globe. As I worked on the script, I continued speaking with Mustafa and men with similar experiences searching for my way into the story. Surprisingly, many aspects of their experience felt familiar. I noticed that despite the many differences between these men and my immigrant mother, they share similar hopes and disappointments about their adopted home and maintained a strong connection to the home and family they had left behind. And so the bond between Abi and Green emerged as the emotional center of the film and guided me through an unknown world that suddenly felt personal and familiar. The language they share is an affirmation of their unique connection and the inherent separation from the world around them. Their dynamic – loving, fraught, and contradictory – is familiar to anyone with a sibling or parent transforming these foreigners or characters in a film into people we recognize, who share many of the same flaws and desires as the rest of us.