"I am so in awe of the Sundance audiences," writer-director Cherien Dabis said as she introduced her movie, "Amreeka." "You guys are the bomb, and I probably shouldn't be saying that as an Arab."

Dabis' movie chronicles the American experience of a Palestinian immigrant, Muna (played by Palestinian actress Nisreen Faour), who with her teen son Fadi (Melkar Muallem), moves to suburban Illinois to live with her sister (Haim Abbass, from "The Visitor") and her Americanized family -- just as the Iraq War is starting. (Read the review here.)

Dabis based her characters on her own family, and the story on her upbringing in a small Ohio town at the start of the first Iraq war. But Faour sees her own story in it, too.

"This is part of me, this is my soul," Faour said. "It's my family, it's my story, it's us."