This document provides a summary of the social realist film "Foreign Home" through analyzing various clips and scenes. It introduces three main characters: Yalda Faysal, a 63-year-old Lebanese woman suffering from kidney stones without health insurance; Jessina Mendez, an 18-year-old girl from the Dominican Republic who receives a letter rejecting her from Pace University; and Yuio Tong, a Taiwanese engineer cleaning streets for $6 an hour. Through direct information, lighting, settings, and body language, the film informs audiences of the real life situations immigrants face in a way that allows viewers to engage with and empathize with the characters.

1. Foreign Home
Lana Hawiz

2. An informative social realist film
A description from the The New York Times is shown,
informing the audience how many immigrants there are in the
USA. A clip of a lady is shown, text appears underneath her
explaining the situation; 'Yalda Faysal, 63 year old Lebanese
woman, suffering from kidney stones'. This draws the
audience in as they now understand the lady’s background in
order for us to sympathise with her more. This approach may
be more appealing to watch as this social realist film allows
the audience to straight away comprehend what’s going on
rather than spending the majority of the film guessing what’s
going on.

3. The pace of the film is still and gentle with a calm non-diegetic
soundtrack. One man asks the Lebanese lady "Did they know
you were on medication?" She replies "yes but I have no
insurance because I have no social security number". This tells
us the lady is suffering quietly inside as she has problems with
kidney stones yet nothing is being done about it. An over the
shoulder shot is used between a man and Faysal, denoting
that there is a two-way conversation going. The environment
that the woman is in is very dark. Ambient lighting is used
from several directions i.e. the traffic lights and the lights
shining outwards from a corner shop. This connotes a casual,
typical day in New York. Her body language; where we see her
limping, enforces our understanding of her situation thus
allows to empathise with her further.

4. A jump cut is then used on showing us a girl with text appearing
underneath of the scene 'Jessina Mendez, 18 year old girl from the
Dominican Republic’ The environment that Jessina is in is slightly more
relaxed and positive than Faysal. Exterior lighting is brighter where
there is a day light setting (natural lighting). This tells us that it is
another day and another story; this allows the audience to guess what
storyline the young woman has behind her; which we do when she
receives a letter informing her that she has been rejected from ‘Pace
University’
The outfit she is wearing is plain and casual (jeans and a jumper). This
is to connote that she is a young busy student working for her future as
we can tell this as we see the look of disappointment on her face when
she finds out she’s been rejected from the university.

5. From here, we can tell that this social realist film differs from
others. ‘Foreign Home’ has made great use of informing real
life situations to the audience. The director has ensured that
the scenery involves direct information with the purpose of
having the audience to think about something once they have
finished watching the film.
'Yuio Tong' a Taiwanese engineer cleans streets for 6 dollars an
hour'. Again this is the third character that we’ve been
introduced to where we straight away get an insight of his life
and living situation. The setting is dark to enforce the negative
life that Yuio is living as he appears tired whilst cleaning the
street.