The U.S.A. isn't exactly the land of the free and the home of the brave if you're a new immigrant.

At least, that's what Jacek Nowak and his mother, Halina, are learning. It's 1981, and they've left Jacek's father, a Solidarity activist, back in Gdansk. Jacek, a brilliant young violinist, lands in a high school class wehre everyone speaks English but him. Halina, who has a degree in languages (she speaks four), lands a job as a cleaning lady at the Voice of America.

Freedom? In theory, they can do whatever tehy want in the new land, but Halina finds the broadcasters at Voice of America treat her like a brainless nobody when she approaches them with questions about what they do.

Bravery? Two spineless bully-boys make Jacek's life miserable, and the girls in his class make jokes about him behind his back.

Jacek knows about bravery. His father is his example and before he left Poland, Jacek was beaten by police for spray-painting Solidarity graffiti on a wall. "You did right, but it's too dangerous," his father told him. That's when his parents decided they had to give his musical career a chance by getting him out of the country.

"Courage is inside yourself," Jacek's grandmother, Zofia (Viveca Lindfors) tells him. As hackneyed as that may sound, this cast really makes us feel the immense fortitude it must take to survive in a new land.

John Cameron Mitchell deserves to be a star. He speaks very little during the movie, but his eyes and the set of his mouth show us the tension that builds as Jacek's pride takes a beating again and again. This boy has real steel inside him, but his emotions seem constantly to ricochet between fight and flight. Jacek is proud, smart, and hurting, and what we can see of his inner life is infinitely moving.

And what a magnificent specimen Viveca Lindfors is. Talk about star presence: the frames she's in practically quiver with power. Elżbieta Czyżewska is almost her match as her daughter. With her soft, pained eyes and sweet smile, she's still a girl who wants Zofia to sing to her at night, and a strong complex woman trying to find herself and nurture Jacek at the same time.

Misplaced is funny, touching and beautifully modulated. Jacek's and Halina's experiences are never played for just laughs and the journey through their lives is infinitely more satisfying than the festival's more comedic Lonely in America. It does have a happy ending, of sorts, but Polish-born director Louis Yansen, who based the story on his own experiences, never lets us forget that for everything gained, something has been lost.