NEW YORK -- Ziad H. Hamzeh's documentary is a powerful and timely portrait of the tensions that can be generated by immigration situations, especially in a post-Sept. 11 world. The story of the events leading up to a massive protest in the small town of Lewiston, Maine, over an influx of 1,100 refugees from Somalia, "The Letter: An American Town and the Somali Invasion" has been garnering great acclaim on the festival circuit and is a natural for public and cable television airing. The film recently played a theatrical engagement at New York's Two Boots Pioneer Theater.

Lewiston, an overwhelmingly white, financially struggling and close-knit community, was an unlikely spot for the federal government to place the black and Muslim Somali refugees, and many of the residents were not exactly welcoming. This group even included the town's mayor, who wrote the titular missive to the newcomers in which he discouraged them from bringing over any further friends or family members. Eventually, the simmering tensions, fueled by various hate groups, led to a massive demonstration by white supremacists and counter-protesters in early January 2003. It became the most heavily policed event in the history of the state. Besides hundreds of riot police officers, there also was a large presence of FBI and Secret Service agents as well as counterterrorism snipers.

The film includes testimony from many of the figures involved in the situation, ranging from the immigrants to local politicians to townspeople both supportive and obstructive. Prominently featured among the latter are members of the World Church of the Creator whose vehemently expressed racist sentiments -- including one comment that these "Third World people will multiply like rats" -- provide many of the film's most dramatic moments.

Fortunately for the town, the protest was peaceful, though in purely clinical cinematic terms, it does represent something of an anticlimax for this very talky film. Nonetheless, "Letter" is an important social document that merits widespread exposure.