Lewiston

LEWISTON is an intimate portrait of an American experiment of living. A crowd of Muslim worshippers prays in an ice hockey rink. An aging Mainer reflects on his unlikely neighbors. Somali women in vibrant colors frisk and frolic at a wedding feast in a conference center. These scenes of cultural collision offer a glimpse of life in Lewiston today. Midway through the film, the
audience learns that Donny Giusti has been killed during a drunken brawl between white and Somali Lewistonians. In the latter half, we see the radicalization of one of Giusti’s close friends and a Somali family’s struggle for normalcy as the city reckons with renewed racial tension.

Background:

In the early 1990s, civil war in Somalia forced thousands of Somalis to seek asylum in the United States. These initial refugees settled in Minnesota and Georgia. In the early 2000s, a secondary migration of Somali-Americans took place as thousands relocated to Maine in search of better schools and cheaper housing. Lewiston, Maine, a small working-class city with a history of French Canadian immigration, proved especially appealing. Initially, white Mainers—from hate groups to the mayor of Lewiston himself—discouraged this relocation. In the wake of the financial crisis, however, white and Somali Lewistonians reached a sort of détente as Somali businesses revitalized Main Street. Recently, Lewiston has faced a resurgence of xenophobia.