Director: Ambarien Alqadar
Country: United States, India
Language: Punjabi | Hindi |English
Year: 2025
Run Time: 40 mins
Chasing Immigrant Dreams in Post 9/11 America
Land of Dreams is an intimate portrait of Virender Rana, a taxi driver from India, chasing his dream of telling his story in America. While he points the camera at his own life and films a Bollywood style movie, the film follows his journey of coming to America, finding joy as part of a larger Sikh community and that of taxi drivers and laying roots as an immigrant. As he joins the elite Uber Black fleet hoping for his dreams to come true, he faces challenges of being a brown immigrant on the streets of post 9/11 America.
Director:
Ambarien Alqadar is a filmmaker, screen writer and a first generation immigrant. Shaped by the experience of growing up in Jamia Nagar, New Delhi, the metaphor of border crossing is central to her creative practice as she works between documentary, narrative and experimental forms. Her first documentary- Who Can Speak of Men? was acclaimed as a "revolutionary for its portrayal of Indian Muslim women" at BFI Flare and selected to several prominent festivals. Four Women and a Room and The Ghetto Girl are experimental video essays exploring intersections of history, embodied experience and memory. Ambarien is an alum of Jamia Millia Islamia, India and Temple University U.S. where she was a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow. She lives between New Delhi and Chicago where she teaches at School of Cinematic Arts, DePaul University.
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