New Thriller Highlights Post-9/11 Paranoia About Arabs

Staring Egyptian cinema star Khaled Abol-Naga, "Civic Duty" is about a paranoid American who is convinced that his Arab student neighbor is a terrorist, raising troubling questions about civil liberties and racial profiling in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Reuters reported Saturday, April29 .

"We feel that we're very misunderstood," Abol Naga said at a press conference on the sidelines of the Tribeca Film Festival.

"For many Middle Eastern (people), Egyptians, Arabs, they feel misunderstood, misrepresented. They feel their voices are unheard in the Western world," added Abol Naga, a winner of the Egyptian version of an Oscar award.

Produced independently for a budget of just $1. 2million, the movie stars Peter Krause, best known as the lead in HBO's hit drama "Six Feet Under," as Abol Naga's neighbor.

After losing his job as an accountant, Terry Allen spends too much time watching scare-stories on cable news and grows more and more paranoid.

Suspicious of his new neighbor, Terry takes matters into his own hands after failing to convince his wife or an FBI agent, played by Richard Schiff, of his terror concerns.

Human rights groups have repeatedly said that racial profiling in the US, especially by law enforcement agencies, has grown dramatically in the wake of the9 / 11attacks.

A May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded that the Arab and Muslim minorities have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Terrorist Mould

bol Naga lamented that Arabs and Muslims have been often cast in Hollywood as terrorists since the 2001 atrocity.

"Middle Eastern and Egyptian actors usually only get to play terrorists, but in this movie I got to be the terrorized one. That was a refreshing twist," he said.

Andrew Lanter, the movie producer, said the thriller can carry a bigger theme about international relations, the BBC News Online reported.

"There's a very strong political message about two sides of a story and shouting one over another and voices not being heard, and what happens in those situations," he said.

"So to me, to achieve both is to utilize the thriller elements to really send a message to the masses."

The Tribeca Festival opened on Tuesday, April25 , with the film "United93 ", about one of the planes hijacked on September 11 .

The movie is a dramatization of the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers overwhelmed the hijackers.

Earlier this month, movies from different Arab countries were featured at the Alwan Film Festival in lower Manhattan in a bid to counter the stereotyped portrayal of Arabs by Hollywood.

Islam had been lampooned in movies, writings and TV shows in the United States, including "JAG," "24," and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s "True Lies."

Last year Fox television network decided to remove some stereotypical aspects about American Muslims from its action drama "24" after pressures from minority leaders.

Showtime, one of leading cable channels in the United States, also started premiering later last year a ten-part series depicting for the first time a Muslim FBI agent as a patriotic hero, who is trying to protect his homeland against potential terror operations by infiltrating a terrorist group.

http://islamonline.net/English/News/2006-04/29/article03.shtml