“I am of two parts divided,” says Geraldine Viswanathan in a new trailer for “Hala.” The coming-of-age drama sees the “Blockers” actress playing Hala, a Muslim teenager torn between worlds. According to her poetry, Hala is “seeking to be understood.” She struggles to identify with her strict mother, Eram (Purbi Joshi), who tries to control her daughter’s schedule, hobbies, and clothing.

“I told you not to get her that skateboard,” Eram tells Hala’s dad (Azad Khan). But he’s convinced that his daughter is OK so long as “she’s not spending time with boys.” Hala is secretly doing just that — a burgeoning romance with a classmate (Jack Kilmer) leads Hala to deceive her parents, but she soon discovers that her father has secrets of his own.

Writer-director Minhal Baig told us that Hala is “wrestling with her identity as a Pakistani-American and a Muslim, the cultural and generational gap between herself and her mother, and recognizing that her father may not be the person she thought.”

“After my father passed away, I moved back home to live with my family in Chicago. It was in that period of two years that I started to reflect on my childhood,” Baig recalled. “A difficult transition took place at the end of my senior year in high school. My relationship with my mother was very contentious at the time. I felt like I was straddling the line between cultures and never really succeeding at either.”

Baig has written and directed several shorts including “Pretext” and “After Sophie.” “Hala” marks her feature debut. You can catch the pic in theaters November 22 and on Apple TV+ December 6. Women served in various department head positions and comprised 75 percent of critical below-the-line roles on the project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aS-qGHH6E0