AMERICANISH SCREENING + DISCUSSION
- Jan. 13, 2022

Join Film Fatales on Saturday, January 15th at 6pm PT at the Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival for a virtual screening of Americanish directed by Film Fatales member Iman Zawahry, followed by a panel discussion.

A twist on the traditional romantic comedy, Americanish highlights layers of womanhood as intersecting with cultural expectations. In Jackson Heights, Queens, two sisters and their newly-immigrated cousin must navigate the demands of romance, culture, work, and family.

The panel conversation will focus on issues of authentic authorship, immigration, and identity, as well as ways that audience members can take meaningful direct action both as members of impacted communities and as allies. Speakers include the film's director Iman Zawahry, producer Roy Wol, producer Paul Seetachitt, actor Aizzah Fatima, actor Godfrey and Dalia Fahmy from the Islamic Scholarship Fund. Moderated by Ramy writer and producer Dr Maytha Alhassen

This event is open to the public. Receive 25% off on tickets all weekend long with discount code cinefatales22


RSVP HERE


Iman Zawahry is one of the first hijabi American-Muslim filmmakers in the nation. She has worked on numerous films that have played at over 100 venues worldwide. Zawahry has worked as a producer on the feature film Paperback with Moonlight producer, Adele Romanski, and Sundance alum, Adam Bowers. Her short film Tough Crowd won an Emmy Award and qualified her as a finalist in the NBC Comedy Short Cuts to pitch a sitcom with NBC executives. She is the recipient of the coveted Princess Grace Award for her film Undercover and was selected as a Lincoln Center New York Film Festival Artist Academy Fellow in 2015. Zawahry also collaborated with the non-profit Islamic Scholarship Fund to create the first-ever American Muslim film grant where she currently serves as director. Zawahry works to amplify the underrepresented female voice. She wrote and directed her debut feature film, Americanish, with a majority female crew. The film won the Audience Award at CAAMFest in San Francisco. She currently is a professor of film production at the University of Florida.


Dr. Maytha Alhassen primarily sees her labor as that of a freedom doula and an engaged wit/h/ness reviving the traditions of the feral femme. She is a historian, journalist, poet, organizer and mending practitioner. As a journalist, she worked as an on-air host for Al Jazeera English and The Young Turks, also field reporting for such outlets as CNN, Huffington Post, Mic, Boston Review. In 2017 she received her Ph.D. in American studies and Ethnicity from USC and gave a TED talk on her ancestral relationship to Syria as part of TED Residency. As a scholar, she co-edited a book on the Arab uprisings, Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions and wrote Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes and How to Transform Them for her Pop Culture Collaborative Senior Fellowship. Alhassen has co-founded multiple social justice organizations including Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, the Social Justice Institute at Occidental College, Believers Bail Out (a Muslim abolition group), and in the wake of George Floyd's brutal murder, the Arabs for Black Lives collective. Currently, Alhassen writes for Hulu series Ramy, is an Associate Professor in Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott college, advises on social impact campaigns and does educational consulting, offers yoga, meditation and reiki workshops and trying to find time to write some books and show treatments.