A screening of the 2004 film “Lana’s Rain” in the Multi-Cultural Center Friday night prompted a discussion on immigration and the international sex trade.

Helen Lee-Keller, associate English professor hosted the series. Her students received credit for viewing the films and writing about the event.

“Lana’s Rain” is a dark, gritty look at a brother and sister who flee war-torn Bosnia in the 1990’s by sneaking into the United States in a crate, only to face the similarly bleak Chicago slums. Lee-Keller tried to start a discussion following the screening, but the room was silent, still processing what they had watched.

The film included a prostitution ring, gun battles and a man who, we are told, kills people with a chainsaw.

Students said that the movie was both engaging and repelling because of its subject matter.

“One of those things that we don’t want to think about is the underside of American life,” Lee-Keller said.

Brad Phelps, a junior kinesiology major, said the film showed how dependent people are on essential documents. “She comes here and realistically she can’t have her identity unless she has the papers,” he said.

The movie’s final shot had Lana, the main character, obtaining a social security card with the birth certificate of a dead woman. Some called it a cop-out in the sense that it avoided showing how that in itself would make her better off. Others panned the film’s corny soundtrack and use of soap-opera elements at points.

“Just listening to the conversation, I do think it brought an understanding of somebody else’s situation, but if we’re going to talk about it as a film, I think it was pretty bad,” said Zenaida Lopez-Cid, a liberal arts graduate student who helped Lee-Keller run the discussion. “I felt like it reinforced stereotypes,” with some of the portrayals of the supporting characters.

The film was part of the “Who is an American?” film series, which all connects to this year’s new One Book Program. The program gave all first-year students a copy of Firoozeh Dumas’ “Funny in Farsi, A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America” to read together. The author visited campus on Oct. 15.

One of the One Book Program’s goals is to encourage collaboration from other professors and departments, said Charlene Martinez, director of the Multi-Cultural Center. As part of that collaboration, the center has hosted the ongoing film series examining the broader issue of the immigrant experience in America.

“The films all coincide with the same idea,” Martinez said.

Typically, she said, 15 to 20 students attend, most for extra credit assignments for classes.

The Multi-Cultural Center is hosting four more movies as part of the series. They are “Saving Face” on Oct. 29, “The Namesake” on Nov. 7 and “Real Women Have Curves” on Nov. 21. All movies start at 5:45 p.m.

Sam Pearson can be reached at [email protected]