A teenager who connects with his heritage through cooking. Young cousins trying to steal their uncle’s adult magazines. A woman considering divorce right after getting married.
These are some of the stories told in “Ramadan America,” a new film that presents five fictional vignettes showing how Muslims interact with their month-long holy observance, interspersed with interviews of real-life followers about how Ramadan affects them.
As America’s Muslim community prepares for the 30-day period of daytime fasting, reflection and charitable giving that starts early next week, filmmaker Asad Butt hopes followers also will make time for his movie.
“Over the last twenty years, we’ve all seen that there’s just not a lot of content made for or by or about American Muslims that realistically portrays us,” the 44-year-old executive producer of Ramadan America said.
“I had my first daughter this past year, and I just want her to grow up with all the content that I didn’t grow up with. This is our first movie to showcase what it’s like for American Muslims to celebrate during this holiday season.”
The stories include a teenage aspiring food influencer who connects with his heritage after asking his grandmother for help in preparing a traditional dish; a couple who celebrate the end of Ramadan called Eid al-Fitr “in their own special way”; grandchildren who must solve their late grandfather’s “final riddle” or risk losing their inheritance; the antics of three young cousins at an Eid party trying to steal their uncle’s adult magazine collection; and a just-married woman dealing with an “emotional minefield” and weighing divorce at a family Eid celebration.
Mr. Butt, the U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, is an adjunct professor at Boston University’s College of Communications and the founder of Rilfelion, a Portland, Oregon-based media company focused on “minority-majority” communities in America, including an estimated 3.85 million Muslims.
The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas affected filming, Mr. Butt said, not least because more than 100 American Muslims worked on the film, along with an equal number of non-Muslims. Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, leading Israel to respond with a months-long campaign against the Iran-backed militant group in Gaza, decimating the Palestinians’ homes.
“All the filming took place in the fall right when the war was starting and what happened at the attack in Israel and so there certainly, in terms of when the production was happening, there was a sense of heaviness and should we be creating art in a time like, when there’s a lot of suffering going on across the world,” he said.
The filmmaker said he hopes the movie “will meet the moment” and “will humanize Muslims to a non-Muslim audience and also allow Muslims to see themselves reflected in media in a way that they haven’t in the last 20 years.”
He said the film will be released online this month with the hope of getting it onto streaming platforms after that. Along with entertaining and educating audiences, Mr. Butt hopes “Ramadan America” will spark others to create films for a Muslim audience.
“We’re doing screenings on college campuses across the country and other community centers,” he said. “We’ve got a couple scheduled and then we’re planning on doing more over the next month or so. Part of that is also we want to have discussions about what it’s like to write nuanced Muslim characters, how to make an indie film production [and] Muslim filmmaking in the year 2024.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.