Actor Haaz Sleiman owns a large, expensive drum that he's afraid to use. "It's like a nice car," he says of the instrument. "It's so pretty, I can't play it."

Hopefully in the future he will break it out from time to time, because Sleiman is an accomplished musician now. In the new movie "The Visitor," opening in Ann Arbor on May 5th, he plays Tarek Khalil, an illegal Syrian immigrant living in New York City. The character is an experienced djembe player, but Sleiman had never played the African hand drum before. To prepare for the role, he practiced the instrument three-and-a-half hours a day for a month and a half.

When filming began, writer-director Tom McCarthy ("The Station Agent") had some advice for Sleiman on playing the drums. "He told me not to think too much, to act like it wasn't a big deal," he recalls.

"The Visitor" centers around Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins, "Six Feet Under"), a professor who travels to New York City for a conference. When he arrives in his little-used apartment, he discovers that a young couple, played by relative newcomers Sleiman and Dinai Gurira, has taken up residence in his absence. Walter soon realizes that these two have nowhere to go, and invites them to stay with him. He starts taking drum lessons from Tarek, who gives him the same advice: not to think too much.

Soon, however, Tarek is arrested and Walter is forced to go to great lengths to save his new friend. He also finds himself having to console Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass, "The Nativity Story") while taking on America's post-September 11 immigration policies. Suddenly, the characters - and the audience - are being asked to think a lot.

Despite the New York setting and ripped-from-the-headlines plot, the people involved with "The Visitor" insist it is not a political film.

"(The film) is a love story between four people. It just so happens that three of them are illegal immigrants," says Sleiman.

Producer and University alum Mary Jane Skalski adds, "It's about how big things in the world affect individual people." She stresses that the entertainment aspect of the film is what should be focused on. "You enjoy yourself, you make a connection with the people on the screen. It's a drama, but there's a lot of comedy as well."

Skalski and McCarthy share a close friendship. They previously worked together on McCarthy's 2003 indie breakout, "The Station Agent." That film, too, was about an eclectic mix of characters that come together and learn from each other in unexpected ways.

McCarthy had already written the script before Sleiman received the part, and it was pure coincidence that actor and character shared similar backstories. Even though he is Lebanese, Sleiman shares many experiences with the Syrian character he plays. He lived with his family in Dearborn, Mich. for three years after coming to America and received an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Wayne State University (". but Michigan is a great school!" he adds with a laugh) before moving to New York City to pursue a career in music. His character Tarek, too, was originally from Dearborn, and both of them consider music a huge part of their lives. According to Sleiman, this helped to lend an extra layer of authenticity to the production.

Still, "The Visitor" wouldn't work without making a convincing friendship out of the odd pairing of an old white college professor and a young Middle-Eastern street musician. Luckily, in New York City such a connection isn't too far removed from reality. When it came time to portray the friendship, Sleiman didn't see it as a challenge at all.

"I didn't think about it," he recalls. "It just happened."

"The Visitor"

Overture Films

Opening May 5th