We tell the experience of what it feels like to immigrate from your home to a new place you're trying to fit into, especially in today's climate. In commemoration, our film is brought to you by an immigrant and first generation cast and crew, helmed by a female writer, director and DP.

CHOKE is about a successful MMA champion who hides her refugee identity from her small American town, and the world. Sara and her family are Muslim refugees who’ve escaped the vicious war in Syria and flee to the Unites States, where she fights for a new life in the brutal sport of mix martial arts.

 

 

The central themes of identity, racism, and fear are heightened by Sara’s struggle between modesty and boldness, aggression and repression, and oscillation between pride of who she is, and shame of where she came from.

 

The words “Muslim” and “immigrant” are so charged with electrifying heaviness in today’s environment. Just when we think the anti-immigrant sentiment has reached fever pitch in this country, the spikes of vicious rhetoric push the stakes higher.

 

 

We truly believe it’s time for a different kind of immigrant story, one that offers a counter-illustration to the depictions of brown women on the big screen as the devout wife, or the unsuspecting terrorist, or depicting refugees as being weak and powerless instead of strong and resilient.

 

 

It’s both a challenge and an honor to depict an authentic refugee experience truthfully and with creative empathy. Being an immigrant myself and being part of a Palestinian family, I feel that my personal experience lends itself to this intent in a powerful way.

 

 

We've put in a lot of work into visual tone, performance pace, and architecting visual cues for the dueling tensions and themes in the film. It is something that audiences will definitely feel and can catch different artistic realizations after watching multiple times.

 

 

Choke is a film about identity, and the choices we make to hide parts of our selves in order to survive, especially in today's climate.

 

We hope the themes and message resonate with you, and if they do, we would love your influence in making this film happen.