This is an excerpt from an application for sponsorship for Alone in America, a work in progress. I edited and rewrote this with director/producer Hina Ali.
Logline:
At the risk of becoming a pariah in her own family, Pakistani filmmaker Hina Ali moves from Karachi to Brooklyn in hopes of escaping scorn for her independence, threats of violence, and unwanted forced marriage. Hina spends her life savings to immigrate to America, leaving her jobs and her ailing father behind. She struggles to find work in the expensive city, with few job contacts or friends. Six months after her arrival in the United States, Hina’s family back home informs her that her father has died, and the funeral is already over. The message: she is not welcome in Pakistan anymore. For this thirty-something independent Muslim woman, being alone in America--with its crushing isolation, loneliness, loss and the anxiety of building a life from scratch may be harder than enduring her oppressive, dangerous home.
Synopsis:
Pakistani filmmaker Hina Ali has weathered several attempts by her family to force her into an arranged marriage and endured the restrictive atmosphere of her native Karachi, where being an independent woman makes you a target for ridicule, bias and threats of violence. She needs to get out. At the risk of losing her family’s love and spending her life savings, she navigates the complicated and expensive visa system of the United States, and moves from Karachi to Brooklyn in September 2017.
She soon finds that building a new life in America is harder than running away from an arranged marriage. Hina shoots the entire film with her two cameras, recording every crucial moment of her journey: what it is like to be in the transition from a rigid environment to the one where she gets to make every decision.
Hina records herself as she enjoys her newfound freedoms: choosing a place to live, owning and wearing her first pair of shorts, and befriending men--mostly non-Muslims! She’s truly free to be who she wants and do what she wants. However, the lack of security in her life is frightening, especially in America’s most expensive city. She faces the challenges of finding a job in a tough market like New York where she competes with American-born young men and women despite having few American contacts. She struggles with living with roommates she barely knows, making new friends, and the growing distance between herself and her family, adding up to a crushing sense of isolation and loneliness. On top of that she’s surprised by racism not just from white Americans, hung up on her accent, but also from Pakistani expatriates who judge her for living alone in America and find her move unseemly for an honorable woman.
After a terrifying lapse in employment she learns that her father suddenly passed away. Her family didn’t even tell her he’s dead until after he’s been buried--a slap in the face that gives Hina the message she’s not welcome among her family anymore. Not being able to communicate with an increasingly distant family stresses her ties to her home country. Her connection with her father was very close--he was her role model and her friend. Despite not being happy about her choices, he understood and defended them, while the rest criticized and ridiculed her as not being womanly enough, being confused. Hina had been the main child in charge of her father’s health, and no one else seemed to take charge after she left. She may not be the only one who blames herself for his death.
Conflicted with feelings of both longing and separation--for Pakistan and the New York of her dreams, she takes stock of her new and old life, she needs to decide which one she wants to keep, and the one she needs to let go. Damned if she stays, and damned if she goes.
On top of this instability, time is running out on her visa and she soon need to find a way to get an extension or risk deportation to Pakistan.
In scenes yet to be shot, Hina will visit her family in Karachi, hoping to confront them about being treated like a pariah or an inconvenience. Can she make them understand her choices, her sacrifices? Will they be too stuck in their ways, or is Hina the one who must give ground in order to find some understanding?