NatGeo Buys Immigrant
Comedy

National Geographic Entertainment has purchased film festival favorite Amreeka , Cherien Dabis's comedy about an immigrant family living in Illinois.

National Geographic will distribute the film about Muna, a single immigrant mother who brings her teenage son to live in America, where she flips burgers at a local White Castle while cooking up falafel burgers on the side. Nisreen Faour stars as Muna, and Melkar Muallen plays her 16-year-old son. Also in the cast are Hiam Abbass, Alia Shawkat, Yussef Abu-Warda, and Joseph Ziegler.

Dabis, an out lesbian, received the National Geographic's All Roads Film Festival Project Seed Grant for her short film Make a Wish , which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.