An Act of Worship
2017 · 10m
Directed by Sofian Khan, Nausheen Dadabhoy
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
A unique portrait of CAIR - the Council on American-Islamic Relations - in the first days of the Trump administration as the civil rights organization responds to the new president’s agenda for Muslim-Americans. _____ Our 100 Days is a partnership between Firelight Media and Field of Vision that aims to tell stories from the perspective of vulnerable communities and explore threats to U.S.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A competent documentary about institutional response to political crisis—solid work, but it does exactly what you'd expect a CAIR film to do, which means it's not the subversive thing hiding underneath that actually interests me.
Khan and Dadabhoy situate this portrait within a vital documentary tradition of embedded institutional access, and the restraint of their observational approach—letting the weight of those first 100 days accumulate through gesture and quiet bureaucratic labor—positions it as serious curatorial work.
The decision to stay with CAIR's administrative machinery rather than cut to external reaction or talking heads is what anchors this; that commitment to the interior perspective of an organization under pressure is the filmmaking choice that elevates what could've been coverage into something genuinely revealing.