America America in 35mm

Added to the National Film Registry in 2001.

Non-professional Greek actor Stathis Giallelis gives a captivating performance as Stavros Topouzoglou in this decade-spanning émigré drama that depicts one version of an immigration experience as lensed by Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool) and edited by Dede Allen (Bonnie and Clyde). Winning an Oscar for Art Direction (Black & White) for Gene Callahan’s visual sensibility and nominated for Best Picture, Directing, and Original Screenplay at the 36th Academy Awards, Elia Kazan’s screen adaptation of his own novel is an epic of both personal and universal proportions, based on the life of his Turkish-born Greek uncle, Avraam Elia Kazantzoglou, who fled Ottoman Turkey in 1913 to seek sanctuary in the United States.