An American Prayer, the gripping 2021 documentary from MTV World founder Nusrat Durrani, was filmed at the height of the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and the chaos of Trump’s first presidency. It interrogates the American Dream, exposing its clashing realities & staggering disparities. In 2025, its themes—dislocation, immigration, racial strife, Islamophobia, & systemic discrimination—are even more urgent. Its fearless characters burn brighter. The film premiered at the prestigious Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn in 2021 & has screened worldwide.

Vincent Harding once asked: Is America possible? This film demands the same answer. The seething stories of conflict, transcendence & raw survival in an alluring yet brutal USA rarely make it to mainstream media. An American Prayer captures a nation locked in a battle over democracy, wrestling with its founding ideals, while the world watches. The American Dream—was it ever real? Has it already died? Its global shine has dimmed, but billions still cling to its fading myth. As Langston Hughes wrote: “The land that never has been yet.”

The film’s eclectic cast includes a young Pakistani-American woman who fought Islamophobia & bipolar disorder to become an acclaimed poet; a former Air Force RF/SATCOM technician haunted by the civilians killed in drone strikes he guided; and a Black man, paralyzed by gun violence at 17, who defied the odds to become a Paralympics powerlifter.

Join us for a screening of this timely and gripping film, followed by an in-depth Q&A session with the director Nusrat Durrani.