By Danny Flannery

It is not a unique observation to say people in the U.S. have a narrow view of the world. Our government may devastate the world, fuel genocide, destabilize continents on a whim, brutalize children, economically strangle entire countries, but these are all easily abstracted in America. On a person-to-person level, it’s easy (or, rather, it used to be easy) to say “We’re a nation of immigrants” and really think we mean it. The Coming to America showcase shatters that idea, bringing the viewers into the lives of two immigrants who see the U.S. for what it is – a country of indifference at best and open hostility at worst, even as we expect them to work as our drivers, our nurses, our caretakers. In A Guest in My Country and Home – both among the best acted and best looking films of the festival – being an immigrant means bottling your own humanity up and keeping your head down.

A Guest in My Country (dir. John Grey) is such an intense short that it makes me queasy to write about. Dembe (Bayo Akinfemi) is an Uber driver working late. But four years ago,  in Uganda, he was a cardiologist, a father, a husband, and a political dissident. Over the course of the short his passengers – a nauseatingly self-assured businessman and his visibly embarrassed wife – will pry this previous life out of him. At first, the couple seems well-meaning, curious if just a tad tone deaf. They do ask his name (though the husband continues to mispronounce it “Demby”., They ask about the photo of his wife and son (“They are still in Uganda,” Dembe tells them). But as the ride continues, the husband grows more and more agitated, insinuating Dembe has gamed the system, chafing at his decorum, at his intellect, at his existence in the country.

The short only briefly ever leaves the car, trapping us next to Dembe as he looks back at the couple, out at the road, into the rearview, at the photo of his family. Akinfemi gives a masterful performance; every minute change in his face or in his gaze showing exactly how he is calculating how much danger he is in. Early in the film, Dembe says amicably “this is my home now.” By the end of the ride, he and the viewer become an unwelcome guest.

In Home (dir. Vivien Pineda Manaloto), Maria’s (Arianne Viardo) immigrant experience is defined less by suspicion and threat and more by indifference and an intense homesickness. A young nurse from the Philippines, we’re first introduced to her outdoors at her eighth birthday, her family singing happy birthday, the sun shining, and her father (Romeo Joseph Rosal) beaming as he tells her to make a wish. Then, we hard cut to her as an adult, her room a cold blue, the alarm on her phone trilling sharply. Throughout the short, we follow Maria as she calls her dad, meets a fellow Filipino also working at the hospital, goes through a shift – notably treating a father and his anxious adult daughter – and tries in vain to get a few weeks of leave approved to visit her family. Throughout all this, her dad’s recurring calls and voicemails serve as a lifeline, without fail bringing back that warmth of the opening shot in an otherwise distant, lonely film. The movie asks simple questions – is home a place? A time? A person? – that in other contexts would be sappy. But here, now, they ring as remarkably earnest.

Today, the outpouring of hatred of immigrants – whether its children being disappeared to concentration camps, federal officers brutalizing random brown people, or droves of “real” Americans proudly announcing their bigotry – can be numbing. Coming to America is a small showcase, but I consider it essential viewing for anybody who would like a reminder that these are people, with lives and thoughts and families and wants, full stop, which is a sentiment difficult to find right now.

Coming to America is playing Friday, March 6, 5:45-:6:45 p.m. at the Cambria Hotel and will include a Q&A with the filmmakers. A second screening and Q&A will also take place Saturday, March 7, 1:15-2:15 p.m., also at the Cambria.