This story is part of a Patch series examining the Muslim experience 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Read other stories in the series here.

Director Rashid Ghazi doesn’t expect Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football to make any money. The Glenview resident just thinks the documentary about the post-Sept. 11, 2001 Muslim-American experience needed to be made.

Read more: A Review of Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football

Set in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Fordson tells the story of the football team at a predominantly Muslim-American high school. The high school students go through grueling practices leading up to a big rivalry game during Ramadan, a holy month where Muslims do not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. Through interviews with students, coaches, family members, teachers and fans, the filmmakers provide an inside look into an American community enjoying one of the nation’s most popular pastimes while coping with racism, cultural misunderstandings and terrorism allegations.

“I felt we had a great brand and a great story to tell about our people and our history,” Ghazi said. “I thought we as a community had done a poor job of telling our own stories.”

Ghazi has a lot of experience with both branding and sports. He manages relationships with ESPN and General Mills at the Niles-based sports marketing agency Paragon Marketing Group. He first learned about Fordson High School through a friend at ESPN and spent six years trying to persuade the school to let him tell their story.

“I think sometimes when you’re within the situation you don’t realize how unique it is,” Ghazi said.

An important voice

The film was released the weekend of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 at AMC theaters in 11 major U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Ghazi said he was initially nervous about releasing the film that weekend, but said he was persuaded it would work after seeing the positive reaction to the film by predominantly non-Muslim audiences at 10 film festivals. The New York Times even listed Fordson in a story on ways to commemorate the anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

“I was expecting some negative backlash but there was nothing major,” Ghazi said. “I think many people felt it was an important voice to be heard on Sept. 11.”

Muslims help with grassroots marketing

Fordson is a truly independent film, with no distribution company. Ghazi and Fordson producers Chicago-residents Ash-har Quraishi and Basma Babar Quraishi have publicized the film through grassroots marketing and Facebook.

“From a marketing strategy standpoint, what I decided to do was drive the film by reaching out to our core audience,” Ghazi said. “We know we can get Muslims in the theater, so let’s go after the audience that’s going to drive ticket sales.”

The strategy worked, filling theaters with crowds that inspired AMC to extend the film’s first run a second week. Fordson opened in Boston and New Orleans Friday, and is also headed to Crestwood and Minneapolis.

The film has received praise from Hillary Clinton and Michael Moore and been written about in the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post, which Ghazi said he hopes will expand the film’s audience.

“My main goal in making the film was to reach non-Muslim Americans,” Ghazi said. “If I had a super-target it would be young people and young adults. They’re our leaders of tomorrow. They’re the ones who will be living in a world that’s even more diverse.”

The response from non-Muslims has been powerful. A woman whose husband is a high ranking military official told Ghazi she’d had a bad perception of Muslims, but that she was moved by the film.

“In a restaurant a guy came up to me and said ‘I had friends who died Sept. 11 and I wanted to thank you for how you treated it,’” Ghazi said.

It was never about the money

Ghazi said in many ways Fordson High School is a case study of how America’s growing Muslim-American community will be integrated. One of the issues Fordson deals with is backlash from the school closing on the Muslim holiday Eid because so many students are out celebrating.  

Ghazi said he expects that to be an issue locally as demographics change. He grew up in Skokie, and when he attended Niles West High School in 1981 he was one of only five Muslim students. Now the Quran Study club is one of the school’s biggest organizations, with nearly 100 Muslim members. The Skokie screenings brought in the second highest number of viewers, following Dearborn.

Ghazi didn’t fundraise for Fordson, instead spending hundreds of thousands of dollars he and his wife had been planning to use to buy a new home.

“We never did this film to make money,” Ghazi said. “If I wanted to make money I wouldn’t put this much money into a documentary. The documentary business is a loser business. Eighty percent lose money and the ones that make money make very little.”

Even though the funds were coming out of his own pocket, Ghazi never skimped on costs. He hired a team of professional photographers to shoot the team’s games, producing the quality of footage you might see in a NFL broadcast. He hired a Hollywood composer to do the music and essentially worked a second full-time job, editing the footage from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

“My motto to the production team was ‘Go big or go home,’” Ghazi said. “We’re as proud as we could be of the finished product.”