Special Preview of the Film Miral, Debuts Thursday, March 31 in Dearborn
Arab Detroit, in cooperation with Palestine Cultural Office, ADC-Michigan, and Jewish Voice for Peace, will debut a special preview of Academy Award® nominee Julian Schnabel’s soon to be released film MIRAL, which opens in select theaters this Friday, March 25 and will open in Detroit on Friday, April 1. The special preview of MIRAL will debut on Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 7pm at the AMC Star Fairlane Theater located at Fairlane Mall.
The film MIRAL is based on the book by Rula Jebreal, award winning journalist, screenplay writer, and author of the book, Miral. The film draws on her own experience growing up in East Jerusalem.
“The movie is historical, as one of the first films about the Palestinian experience, written by a Palestinian author, and released to mainstream theaters throughout the U.S,” said Warren David, founder and publisher of Arab Detroit (www.arabdetroit.com).
For more information about the film go to http://miralmovie.com.
<b>About the Film:</b>
From Julian Schnabel, director of THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS and BASQUIAT, come MIRAL, the visceral, first-person diary of a young girl growing up in East Jerusalem as she confronts the effects of occupation and war in every corner of her life. Schnabel pieces together momentary fragments of Miral’s world–how she was formed, who influenced her, all that she experiences in her tumultuous early years–to create a raw, moving, poetic portrait of a woman whose small, personal story is inextricably woven into the bigger history unfolding all around her.
Miral’s story, which shifts sinuously through layers of time and emotions, begins with the woman who will become her teacher. Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbas, THE VISITOR, AMREEKA), who in 1948 turned her father’s home into the Dar Al-Tifel Institute, an orphanage and school for Palestinian children. What would you do if you found 55 orphans wandering the streets in the middle of a war-torn city? For Hind, the answer was to protect them, draw a line around them and make a safe haven where they could not be harmed, and where they could learn in safety and begin to imagine a more peaceful world.
In 1978, years after Hind starts the school, a 5 year-old girl arrives at the Institute in the wake of her mother’s tragic death. This is Miral (Freida Pinto, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE), and this is her story. She will grow up sheltered inside the protective walls of Dar-Al-Tifl, but then at the age of 16, on the cusp of the Intifada, Miral is assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she is awakened to the anger and struggles that seem to be her legacy. When she falls for a fervent political activist, Hani (Omar Metwally, MUNICH, RENDITION), Miral is drawn into a personal dilemma: to choose a path of violence or to follow Mama Hind’s hard-fought belief that education is the only way to pursue lasting peace.
<b>Film Credits:</b>
MIRAL is distributed by The Weinstein Company. Jerome Seydoux presents MIRAL, a film by Julian Schnabel, starring Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Yasmine Al Massri, Ruba Blal, Alexander Siddig, Omar Metwally, Stella Schnabel, Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave. The screenplay is by Rula Jebreal, based on her semi-autobiographical book of the same name. The producer is Jon Kilik. Francois Xavier Decraene is the executive producer. This film is a French-Israeli-Italian-Indian Co-Production of Pathe, ER Productions. Eagle Pictures and India Take One Productions, with the participation of Canal + and Cinecinema.
<b>Event Sponsors:</b>
Arab Detroit (www.arabdetroit.com) is a leading provider of digital media, including events, news, culture, and commerce to the Arab American community; The Palestine Cultural Office is a non-profit organization that provides support for and promotes greater awareness and understanding of issues concerning Palestinian people and culture; ADC Michigan (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee) is a civil rights organization committed to defending the rights of people of Arab descent and promoting their rich cultural heritage; Jewish Voice for Peace is a diverse and democratic community of activists inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, and human rights.
<b>March 31st Event Information:</b>
This special preview of the film MIRAL is by invitation only. To reserve a pair of tickets, send an email to Arab Detroit: <a href=”mailto:info@arabdetroit.com”>info@arabdetroit.com</a>. Requests will be fulfilled on a first come basis and invitees only will be notified no later than Wednesday, March 30, 5:00pm.
<a href=”http://arabdetroit.com/events.php?id=2110″>Click here for more information about this event</a>