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Amira may be the most controversial film presented in this year's Wisconsin Film Festival-not for Madisonians necessarily but for Arab people and, especially, Palestinians. Written and directed by Egyptian Mohamed Diab whose previous films were about pressing socio-political issues in his country, and played mostly by Palestinian actors, the movie centers around two women. Amira (Tara Abboud) is 15, one of more than 100 Palestinian children born to men who have been sentenced to long-term, or life in prison by Israel, and who smuggled their semen out to their wives. She is spunky, self-assured, and respected by her community. Warda (Saba Mubarak) is Amira's mother, who married the incarcerated Nuwar (Ali Suliman) in absentia, standing in her bridal suit next to his enlarged photo.

When the two visit Nuwar in the Israeli Megiddo prison (where a soldier asks Warda if she's married "to that terrorist" and Amira replies "You mean freedom fighter"), he tells them of an opportunity to have another child. That is where things start going awry, eventually changing forever the lives of all three and those around them and turning a tight-knit community into a dangerous place.

There is very little daylight or bright lights in the film and those who are not imprisoned are often framed with fence-like structures surrounding them. There are many mirrors and photographs, where the characters fantasize of other lives and seem to try and understand who they are, their relationships, and how others see them. It's mostly a very good movie with some questionable twists toward the end-but these don't take away from the weight of what is presented, and the way it is. The film has won six awards so far in various festivals.

And the controversy? The film has been the target of a pan-Arab social media campaign to reduce its rating and stop it from being shown because some people consider it offensive to Palestinian prisoners and undermining their ordeals by addressing the smuggling of sperm which offers them the opportunity to have children, an act that is understood by some as a show of resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Who's right? That's not for me to judge. Should you see the movie? Yes, absolutely.

The landscape is stark, the buildings are too, and so is what happens inside them. This is a Turkish boarding schools for several hundred Kurdish students of various ages, who are told by one teacher that there is no such thing as the Kurdish region. They speak Turkish, have to work, and are constantly harangued, harassed, and bullied by the adults who are responsible for them. Cruelty is part of the game, as is neglect.

Cruelty, neglect, harassment-all are infectious, and some of the students learn from their teachers how to torment their peers. Eleven-year olds Yusuf (Samet Yildiz) and Memo (Nurullah Alaca) are among the youngest and smallest and when Memo gets sick after one such experience, no one but Yusuf is concerned and it's left to the young boy to tend to his friend and insist, quietly, respectfully, carefully, consistently, that care must be given. He continues doing so even as feelings of loneliness and helplessness take over.

As the adults wake up to the need to do something about the by now unconscious Memo, a blizzard closes the roads, the heat has stopped working, secrets are revealed, accusations and insinuations abound, incompetence becomes obvious, and everyone tries to shift the blame to others. Eventually surprising things are revealed.

As Yusuf, Samet Yildiz is outstanding. Shy and quiet, yet alert and taking everything in, he embodies the lone child with one friend, who sees and hears and incorporates everything. Director and co-writer Ferit Karahan was a student in a boarding school like the one depicted here and, like Yusuf, he reveals subtle dynamics in addition to the crass ugliness. A lowly worker, almost off frame, takes his hat off despite the freezing temperatures when he is called to answer the headmaster's questions. A quick but shocking moment of a teacher walking in the hallway at night with a small student while all the others are in their beds. The headmaster sending Yusuf and another student to get tea for all the adults who congregate in the sick room but not for the students who've been keeping vigil over Memo. A sick room with a door that doesn't open and nothing usable other than aspirin .

This is an excellent film, adding to all too few others about the horrors of boarding schools for minority children in other parts of the world. Check out Rabbit-Proof Fence (Australia) Sami Blood (Sweden) and Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School.