Eight minutes. One hotel room. The weight of a border between mother and daughter.
Leila, a 28 year old Syrian American woman, anxiously awaits the outcome of her mother’s immigration interview in a hotel room that is meant to be their meeting place if her mother is approved to enter the US.
Acting
Rand Faris carries entire universes in her silence.
Direction
Albani weaponizes negative space and hotel beige.
Cinematography
Every frame breathes the same air as Leila's panic.
Director
Farah Albani
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 'Muslim ban' era spawned a wave of Arab-American shorts like this—MAMA joins a vital, underseen canon of immigration cinema that refuses spectacle for suffocation.
Hotel rooms in cinema are usually transient; here Albani traps us in liminal space that becomes purgatory. The fluorescent lighting is a character.
US
