Detroit Unleaded to Premiere at Toronto International Film Festival
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Director Rola Nashef expands her award-winning short film for her feature-length debut, a spirited comedy-drama set in a small, family-owned Detroit gas station. When his father is killed during an armed robbery, Lebanese-American youth Sami (E.J. Assi) suddenly finds himself saddled with a life he never wanted. Forced to take over the family business to save both himself and his heartbroken mother from certain financial ruin, the once university-bound Sami must put his dreams aside and resign himself to a world composed of junk food, magazines, overpriced Tigers baseball memorabilia and off-brand perfume.
Working behind newly installed bulletproof glass (“they stay on their side, I stay on mine”), Sami operates the station with his ambitious cousin Mike (Mike Batayeh), who has dreams of expanding the business by opening a second location. Aided by addle-brained parking lot attendant Roger (Scott Norman), they struggle to keep the business afloat, while engaging in an ongoing feud with a neighbouring gas station over the soaring price of petroleum. When the beautiful Naj (Nada Shouhayib), a sophisticated but proper “up-do girl,” arrives at the station to deliver an order of cheap long-distance phone cards from her brother’s cellphone store, Sami is immediately smitten, but this budding, secret romance is threatened by Naj’s brother’s strict ideas about how his younger sister should conduct herself in public. Clandestine meetings with Naj behind the protective bulletproof box set Sami’s head spinning, as he begins to dream of a life away from the limited horizons of the family business.
Packed with colourful secondary characters — including a parade of eccentric late- night customers and Mike’s shady prospective “business” partners — Detroit Unleaded is both a borderline screwball comedy and a deeply felt evocation of the experience of second-generation Arab-Americans, as they struggle to balance familial obligations with aspirations for a better life. Exploring race relations, generational differences and economic strife with sharp wit and a keen eye, Nashef’s debut feature is a rallying call for a new wave of Arab-American filmmaking.
<a href=”http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2012/detroitunleaded”>More information</a>