If you watch his "America, America" you will understand the plight of Christians in a Muslim land.
America, America (1963)
In his 1988 autobiography, A Life, director Elia Kazan recounts a disagreement he had with his production advisors while working on America, America. The film’s protagonist, a twenty-year-old Anatolian Greek of humble origins named Stavros (Stathis Giallelis), arrives as an immigrant in the United States, whereupon he falls to his knees in gratitude and kisses the ground. Kazan was told that the gesture was a cliché and should be cut from the movie. He at first relented, but then had second-thoughts: “I doubt that anyone born in the United States has or can have a true appreciation of what America is.” The ground-kissing scene was left intact. America, America was too close to Kazan’s heart for compromise. He wrote the screenplay (and novel) as a means of exploring his family’s cultural heritage and honoring the dreams that brought Europeans pouring into America at the turn of the century. Kazan, born in Turkey, was four years old when he came to the U.S. with his parents in 1912.
The character of Stavros Topouzoglou is based on Kazan’s uncle, who was the first member of the family to immigrate. America, America primarily concerns Stavros’ journey from central Turkey to the harbor city of Constantinople, where he eventually boards passage to the States. Filmed on location under difficult circumstances, the movie looks and sounds unlike anything Kazan had directed before. The first hour is an extraordinary depiction of impoverished villages percolating with vibrant folk music and whispered political tensions. Fog-shrouded mountain vistas stretch across the landscape. Oppression rears its head when the Turkish Army sets fire to a church filled with Armenian women and children. No small measure of the impact of these powerful images is due to cinematographer Haskell Wexler and editor Dede Allen. Wexler’s framing at times recalls the classic compositional rigor of Potemkin or Citizen Kane. (While praising his camerawork, Kazan claims that Wexler was a “pain in the ass” who despised the director’s reactionary politics and hated the script.)