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Film Depicts Challenges Of High School Footballers During Ramadan

DEARBORN (WWJ) - It's a new film debuting just days before September 11th,  and it's all about making the country think about how Muslims are portrayed. WWJ's Kathryn Larson brings the story from Dearborn where the documentary movie "Fordson: Faith Fasting Football" is about to premier.

Fordson High's head football coach Fouad Zaban said it's a move that's inspired a movie.

"We just felt that it was, practicing six to eight hours a day, in the heat, with our kids fasting, it was not going to be something very safe."

Zaban is talking about Ramadan, a month when Muslims traditionally fast every day from sunrise to sundown.

The film's director Rashid Ghazi said while the movie is about football, it's also about bringing active stereotypes to an end and changing them.

"As a muslim, as an ex-football player myself, I thought it would be a phenomenal story to tell, mainly to use football as a way to reach fellow Americans to tell them about who Arab-Americans and Muslims really are."

Ghazi said the movie follows the life of four Fordson football players as they gear up for their big senior year rivalry game during the last ten days of Ramadan. The film shows the players' outer struggle to overcome the hunger and thirst of fasting as they prepare for the big game, but also their inner struggle to reconcile their Arab heritage with their American birthright.

"We've had to deal with racism, challenges the school system has faced having a majority of Muslim, Arab community. We deal with challenges the team's faced when they fast and play football as well. So, we tell a lot of social and political stories throughout the film, but at the end of the day, it ends up being a rivalry between Fordson High and Dearborn High. And that's kind of the payoff at the end, you get to see the game and see what happened."

The film will be playing in select AMC Theatres from September 9 through September 15. For details, click here.

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