Yasmin

The film "Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan is about a young Pakistani woman who has to rearrange her world past 9/11. Yasmin, who lives in the Muslim area of a north English town, has a double life. In the Muslim society she is the daughter of the mosque's custodian and a good Muslim wife, but in her job in the "white, English world" she is an atheist and trendy single woman. The truth lies somewhere in between, which she has to face when 9/11 hits her life and people start treating her with mistrust and suspicion.

The conflicted Yasmin has a conservative, religious father. Her brother is also religious but he can easily be influenced and becomes an extremist. In contrast to them there is John, her English friend, who is obviously in love with Yasmin but is finally overtaxed by Yasmin's problems. One of those is Faysal, her bogus husband, who is completely misplaced in England because he is incapable of the language and isolated.

Kenny Glenaan has created a movie which shows a woman finding her identity in the middle of a religious conflict. He shows how prejudices can destroy lives, and how they can affect everyone. But he also explains how extreme situations can make you think about yourself and find your place in the world.

I really liked "Yasmin" because it is about real people, issues and emotions. You can feel that there are real stories behind this fiction.

One could say this movie is too simple, no work of art. But I guess it is in fact this simplicity which makes this film that good, because it is not artificial- it is simply a captivating story. That's enough.

I recommend this film to everyone who is interested in real issues and people, in the problems of our time and the impact they have on us. Everyone fascinated by the complex relations between people will be captivated by this study of microcosm of a conflicted family.

The above title was suggested as a suitable alternative name for the film by one of the crew who was I was chatting to after its screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. David Blunkett's attempts to flout or re-write the law have produced widespread condemnation from civil liberties groups and lawyers - but one of the minority groups most affected is British Muslims.

In this warm, light-hearted comedy, set in a British Muslim community immediately around and immediately after 9/11, we see the horror of what members of that community were faced with as a result of the social, institutional and (shamefully) police and legal disregard for their civil liberties. In explaining the extensive research behind the film, Director Kenneth Glenaan says the examples used (innocent families being awoken by police 'terror' squads, thrusting guns in their faces, detaining them indefinitely etc) were typical of many actual cases, as were the scenes of discrimination and abuse in the workplace and in the street.

In our story, a modern, working Pakistani woman, Yasmin, has a traditional (if lay-about) husband who is falsely imprisoned as a terrorist suspect. It turns out that the rather simple chap, isolated by his poor English, had been making long phone calls to his brother back home – who it so happens was a teacher at a school that had received funds from the Kashmir Liberation Front (which has connections with terrorism). Yasmin was about to divorce him, but the disingenuousness of the authorities eventually leads her to take his side as she realises injustices are being perpetrated against him.

Other members of the family cover a range of attitudes, from the newly-recruited activist son distributing flyers (when not selling hash or working at the local mosque), the father who keeps trying to introduce a note of common sense, to the youths who find their new-found I(if fictitious) aura of ‘potentially dangerous freedom fighters' helps them attract local white girls. We see the way a decent white person woos a Pakistani who is not a practicing Muslim, how she has adapted to western values, yet we also see the bigoted look of shock on his face when she suggests he accompany her to the mosque one day. We see police tactics from the point of view of Muslims who have nothing to hide, the repugnance of those police tactics, yet when we examine them honestly we realise they are quite what we might expect – and we wouldn't have found them repugnant unless we saw them from the receiving end.

But Yasmin is not a diatribe or an ode to the miseries of a disenfranchised group. It is a film about the many positive experiences that everyone can relate to within a small British Muslim community. It takes away much of the mystique and makes everyday Islam a little less arcane to the western newcomer. It uncovers more similarities than differences. It is a film that crosses borders, that lets us enter other peoples' hearts (in a similar way that a Full Monty, by the same writer, did), but it also leaves us with very serious questions to consider.

A few of things I pondered during this film:

In Britain, most white people cannot distinguish (by looking) between a Pakistani, an Iraqi, a Palestinian, a Syrian, etc. Neither can we distinguish the accents (a point also made by Control Room filmmaker Jehane Noujaim - the 'Iraqis' toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein did not appear to be Iraqis).

When we hold our western democracy up as an example for other countries to emulate, it is shameful that our government should be guilty of implementing such unworthy measures as those experienced by British Muslims.

The attitude of the British government has pushed Muslims together, of whatever background: if faced with a choice of two evils, people are more likely to be understanding of family and those of the same or similar culture. The attitude of our government in clamping down unjustly and indiscriminately on Brtitish Muslims in itself helps to foster terrorism, and gives terrorist recruiters more ammunition (just as Bush's actions in Iraq, in immediate practical terms, increased the threat of terrorism).

Not all people in a Muslim community are Muslims! Some haven't been to a mosque for years.

The lies told to the British public over Iraq cause untold suffering to innocent British Muslims. Not only indirectly through prejudices introduced through the system, but they are blamed in a totalitarian way simply because they are Muslim. The real culprits, those with massive oil interests (primarily Osama bin Laden and co and George Bush & co), and those that fund and keep terrorism covert (primarily Saudi Arabia and the CIA) are given a light dusting by the public and the authorities - largely because they are untouchable (and Saudi Arabia's foreign investments are so vast that upsetting them will upset the Western economy).

In the Muslim / Arab's mind, all the Middle East conflicts centre around Palestine. This has been said again and again but is ignored by Westerners. Right Wing USA has no real intention of 'solving' the Israeli/Palestinian conflict except as part of U.S. expansionism, as outlined by the NeoConservatives' blueprints that guide U.S. foreign policy. Anyone wanting a fuller understanding of the East-West Islam-Christianity relations and conflicts need only study and comprehend the Israel-Palestine situation.

Yasmin uses a number of stereotypes, all pushed together into one family. This is its strength and its weakness - to break new ground, especially using the medium of light comedy (which reaches people persuasively without polemic), stereotypes help to focus public awareness. The weakness is that many Muslims may feel patronised by the simplisticness. Many stereotypes are also not covered - the well-educated, middle class British Muslim, for instance. But some of these themes are outwith the scope of the film. Reactions to the movie at the Edinburgh International Film Festival screenings, both ecstatic and critical, show there is still much to be done. But this film opens at least a window of understanding for the white, non-Muslim community on the subject of oppression of British Muslims since 9/11 - a very small window perhaps, but perhaps the first one. At the time of writing, the film has distribution rights secured all over Europe - except, of course, the island where Mr Blunkett happens to live.

In England, the Pakistanis Yasmin (Archie Panjabi) lives two lives in two different worlds: in her community, she wears Muslin clothes, cooks for her father and brother and has the traditional behavior of a Muslin woman. Further, she has a non-consumed marriage with the illegal immigrant Faysal to facilitate the British stamp in his passport, and then divorce him. In her job, she changes her clothes and wears like a Westerner, is considered a standard employee and has a good Caucasian friend who likes her. After the September, 11th, the prejudice in her job and the treatment of common people makes her take side and change her life.

"Yasmin" is a powerful drama that exposes the tough life of Muslin immigrants in England after the terrorist attack of September, 11th. The story is very real and well acted, and shows the difficult situation of simple people that suddenly are hated, submitted to interracial intolerance, injustice and prejudice, just because of a group of religious fanatics, causing a generalization of worldwide hate. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Yasmin - Uma Mulher, Dois Mundos" ("Yasmin, A Woman, Two Worlds")

Yasmin is a relatively low budget, British-financed and made film about a young, attractive, British Pakistani Muslim woman brought up in northern England. That is an unusual and welcome starting point for a film. However, the film's weaknesses do not overcome this stimulating basis.

Yasmin (Archie Panjabi, with a strong performance that suffers from the script, and who at times seems to be playing more towards her own background rather than Yasmin's) works for some sort of charity or social services. She is in an arranged marriage with Faysal (Shahid Ahmed, playing well given the limitations of his role) and Nasir (newcomer Syed Ahmed in a powerful performance) is a devoted but restrictive father. Her family lives through the attitudes to non-white Britons and to the changes wrought by 9/11.

Given the appropriate shooting style (the first DoP was sacked; replacement Toni Slater-Ling has done a fine job of making things interesting without coating them in sugar), the competent and sometimes excellent direction from former actor Kenny Glenaan and generally fine performances all round, it is on the writing and plotting that criticism must centre.

Unfortunately writer Simon Beaufoy's script is one that flashes with occasional brilliance before subsiding into a hinterland between credibility and exploitation. Much has been made in the publicity for Yasmin about the extensive workshopping process that led to the script. The idea for the film started with the Oldham and Bradford riots of 1999, before morphing into rather different territory under the pressure of 9/11. The film never does manage to balance between these two poles.

A film inspired by those riots would need a sharply observed sense of place, and of the mixture of identities inherent in being born non-white in Britain. Yasmin has the latter, though the identities are rather crudely displayed sometimes, but it does not have the former. The workshops took place "across the north" and the film is set in what is described in the publicity as "a northern mill town". Quite what the presence of a mill has to do with anything in a northern town today - except tourism - is baffling. Yasmin was actually shot in Keighley. Not making the location explicit is understandable, but the idea of an interchangeable 'north' betrays the same lack of precision that afflicts the characters.

To encompass differences of gender, nationality, religion and age is to ask a great deal of any character or script, and it proves too much for either the film or Yasmin to bear. Her character, so central to the film, is forced to display these different identities rather than possess them. She is therefore left with little sense of self to give to the viewer.

The beautifully realised opening, entirely without dialogue for a good few minutes, is the strongest part of the film, but is the base it then goes on to ignore. Yasmin's work is what enables her to escape the binds of the other parts of her identity, and yet we never find out what it is. It funds the Golf cabriolet she drives (there's even a line of dialogue on this); it gives her a life away from her husband and her home; she is employee of the month (which we only find out when someone has drawn an Osama-style beard on the picture). It is about as realistic a portrayal of work as an average Hollywood movie.

Yasmin's work also represents an independence that doesn't seem to fit with an arranged marriage. Quickly it is made clear that the marriage is an unhappy one, her husband Faysal - the "thick Paki" as she describes him - being more concerned with his new goat than in trying to bridge the gap to his wife.

The only character who isn't required to represent things beyond his character, and is therefore the strongest, is the father. Setna infuses the struggles of maintaining a family, traditions and sanity with palpable tastes of loss, confusion and frustration.

Finally, then, Yasmin is a victim of over-ambition. If there had been more time devoted to the atmosphere in Britain between Muslims and Christians before and after 9/11, perhaps we would have heard the two leaders' words in a more different context. If there had been time to explore Yasmin's marriage to Faysal, we might have been able to understand better why she turns to him amidst the difficulties of his and then her arrest. If there had been time to sketch race relations (as opposed to religious ones) in Britain before 9/11 we might have had a better understanding of the film's setting and of the struggles within Yasmin's family. If we had seen more of the role of the mosque in that community, we might have been able to understand better the attraction Nasir feels towards becoming involved with terrorists. As those terrorists tell Nasir, "the war against Islam has gone global". In which case there is all the more need for specifics, for an understanding which can only come through exploration, not display.

Although Yasmin tries to do far too much, it is an interesting to watch it do so. So far there are distributors for most of Europe except the UK, which is something that should change, for this unbalanced and unusual film is worth watching nonetheless.

The film "Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan deals with the difficulties of a young Pakistan woman who tries to manage a western life, free of tradition, as well as a religious Muslim life.

Yasmin, protagonist, lives in a mill town in the north of England with her father, Khalid her brother Nasir and isolated Faysal to whom she has been married by her parents so that he can stay in England. Nevertheless Yasmin wants to be divorced as soon as possible. Together with her English colleague John she works for a social service and she seems to be far more away from than she actually is, always trying to distract herself from the problems of her migrant community life. Soon she finds herself facing an unfamiliar experience: Islamophobia caused by the incident of 9/11. John still wants to care and plays down the bullying of their colleagues. Suddenly Faysal is suspected of being involved into 9/11 so that Yasmin and her family and John are taken into custody. This is when John is told by the police that he is friends with a woman who is married to a man that is most likely involved into terror activities.

With "Yasmin" Kenny Gleenan has made a really versatile film that deals with prejudice but makes a most unprejudiced statetment. What I really like is that the viewer is able to comprehend every character's actions and opinion and nobody is judged too harshly. The film also leaves enough space to form your really own opinion. I can imagine that especially viewers of Muslim origin who live in a European country can easily identify with Yasmin's conflict.