User reviews

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")

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.

Yasmin Husseini lives with her father, brother, uncle and her "husband" – her marriage to immigrant Faysal being an arrangement between families as opposed to a relationship. Divorce is on the cards as she is very together and British-born while his poor English and "uncivilised" ways grate on her. Living a traditional Muslim life at home for her father but living like a "Westerner" at work, Yasmin is forced to take sides when a news flash comes onto the TV on the afternoon of September 11th 2001. Treated differently by everyone, Yasmin tries to get on the best she can but soon learns about the true nature of new UK terror laws when it turns out that Faysal who has a brother back home who teaches at a school funded by the KLF.

Described by another reviewer on this site in his name-dropping but useful review on this site as a "light-hearted comedy", this film was clearly not marketed well if that's what people thought it was going to be – rather it is a solid drama that looks at the impact of 11/9/01 on the British Muslim community – many of the younger generation, like Yasmin, have much more in community with western values than with those preached by Bin Laden. On the face of it the film could have been a very PC affair with a load of pandering; however, aside from loads of "white authority" stereotypes the film is pretty balanced and interesting look at the plight of Yasmin. The story is interesting enough and lots of issues are touched on – interracial relationships, fear, old world versus western values, disaffected youth and so on; mostly it all works although the nature of the beast means that Yasmin's situation is quite extreme because so many situations are rolled into the experience of the Husseini family.

The cast is pretty good though and it is mainly their work that keeps it worked and stops their characters just being big clichés. Panjabi is a good actress and her Yasmin is well crafted with conflicting loyalties and desires, making her an interesting character and a good performance. Ahmed's Nas is a good performance, very natural, and it is not his fault that he has to carry the extreme experience of disaffected youth being drawn into terrorism. Jackson is lumbered with a poor character – merely a combination of all the mistrust that we are being old that "all white people" have towards Islam; he tries his best and is natural at the start but once 9/11 occur he is clumsy and poorly written when viewed next to Yasmin.

Overall this is a good film that does a good job of summarising the Muslim experience since they became public enemy #1. Being Northern Irish, I know how it feels (and also know how it feels to suffer under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as was) and I am not too sympathetic with Muslims groups who play the race card in every discussion on this subject, so I liked that the film didn't do that. The title role is well performed and the film does a good job of pulling a lot together without making it one big clichéd PC mess.

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 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.

Yasmin.

Yasmin Husseini, a young Muslim woman from Pakistan, lives with her father Khalid, her brother Nazir and her "husband" Faysal in a working-class area in England. At home, she is the Muslim daughter. On the way to work, she is changing clothes, getting into her red car and is off to the Western world. Life works. But with 9/11, things change and Yasmin has to make a decision… The director's intention with the film "Yasmin" was to show people what was really going on after 9/11 in and against Muslims in England and how suspicion and racism, so called Islamophobia, has increased. The movie is about the right to adapting to a different culture without forgetting about where you come from. The impressive thing about the movie is the cruel thing about it at the same time: It is very close to reality. Experiences Muslims made after 9/11 are united in the story of Yasmin and her family. But what makes the film that realistic are not these references only, it is the actor's performances as well as their purity. That is why the audience comes close to the protagonists and their destiny. All in all, "Yasmin" is a film that makes you thinking. Worth seeing!

Most people are aware of Archie Panjabi from the film "Bend It Like Beckham", but especially from the American television series "The Good Wife" in which she plays sexy investigator Kalinda. This film gives her the opportunity to really stretch her acting chops as Yasmin, who for her family is traditional Muslim but for work at a center for the mentally challenged changes into Western clothes and spends time at a bar. The World Trade Center bombing happens and the Muslim community in this film set in the North of England are now under suspicion (there is even a note in Yasmin's locker that states "Yasmin likes Osama". She had to be told who Osama was). The film is sober, absorbing, well acted and played, especially Ms. Panjabi. If fans of "The Good Wife" check this out, they will surely be surprised to see how emotionally deep her character is. This film captures a glimpse into a post 9-11 world in which the world, especially the world depicted in this film, becomes very complicated. Recommended.

I was stunned by the use of images from Halabja by the director, I assume he did not research the material for this film rather than sheer ignorance on his side.

City of Halabja where I am from, was bombed by an Arab Islamic state(Saddam Hussain) and in the course of few hours over 5000 civilian lost their lives. The actual barbaric act was not committed by the west but by an Arab Isalmic country towards women and children. To this date no Islamic state or an Arab country denounce this brutal and vicious act publicly. Even when the images of Halabja shown to world media at the time, NO Islamic group in UK denounce the massacre not even to date.

So showing the images of Halabja and frame the west for it, is like frame USA and Britian for the Jewish concentration camps during the 2nd world war.

Out of professional decency, the images of Halabja should be cut from the film, and the director should spend some of his time researching the facts.Saddam like the 9/11 terrorist use blind hate and violence to convey his vision to anyone disagree with him.

The film „Yasmin" directed by Kenny Glenaan has won an award at the Edingburgh festival. The film deals with the consenquences of 9/11 for a Muslim community in Northern England and is a moving portrayal of a Muslim family living in a mill town.

Yasmin is of Muslim background but has grown up in England. She wants to conform to the western life although her family are traditional Muslims. She goes to work, drives a car and behaves like an English girl outside her house. At home she holds the family together and tries to fulfill her role as a Muslim woman. Yasmin is a strong character because she manages to deal with these totally different worlds. Still her father, a warm-hearted man, is not happy with her behavior. And there is also Yasmin's brother. He is a typical teenager; he wants to be rebellious and tries to break free. Yasmin is like a best friend to him.

You can relate to Yasmin because she is just a "normal" woman who wants her freedom, independence and to take her own decisions. It is shown wonderfully how she tries to break free from a conservative life.

The film is really touching because one realizes how little you about the Muslims in England and how unfairly they have been treated after 9/11. There are hilarious but also breathtaking moments in this drama

First of all, the story line was non existing. I didn't see the point of the film until 9/11 occurred. All I witnessed were bad representations of stereotypes, bad acting and you could say offensive characters. We'll start with that fact that only one person could act and that was Renu Setna who played Khalid (the father). He portrayed a good example of a traditional Muslim father and for that I have to give him credit. Although I have read that Archie Panjabi is a wonderful actress I did not see this the main point being her accent was horrendous. Not even to mention Steve Jackson's (John) diabolic performance - he can not act to save his life.

Also I have to say that the fact the scene of this poor elderly woman not realising the cameras helping the Muslim lady being discriminated was left in to draw the audience - shows how bad the rest of the screen writing was.

The movie „Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan deals with the issue of Muslims living in Britain and how they are treated after the attacks of 9/11. It is set in a small British town, where Yasmin, the main character of the movie, lives with her father, brother and bogus husband, who she married because her father wanted her to. But still she is a very modern, educated and strong woman with a respectable job and her own car. Her life is good until the events of September 11th shake her world. Suddenly a victim of prejudices and suspicion, she has to fight to keep her family intact as well as somehow get on with her own life too.

Yasmin is very smart and tries to help everyone who asks for it. She acts as a mediator between the Muslim and the British community. Although she belongs to the Muslim community, she is not very religious. Another main character is her brother Nasir who is a small scale drug dealer and the Muezin in the local mosque. He is probably the most tragic character because he is seduced by a fundamentalist preacher to go to a trainings camp in Pakistan and join the Jihad.

I think the director tries to arouse people's awareness about the mistreatment of Muslims that occurred in the post 9/11 time like random police searches and the imprisonment of Muslim men without any just cause. But he also puts the focus on the sublime racism some immigrants have to face everyday at work and the prejudices that keep some people from living peacefully alongside each other. I think this movie could have been set almost everywhere in the western world were Muslim immigrants live, for example in Germany.

I like the movie because it tells a very fascinating story and it also shows the events of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 from a completely different position. Some people forget that not every Muslim is a potential terrorist and that many of them strongly disagree with the opinions and the hatred some fundamentalist lunatics try to spread. I recommend this movie to be shown in schools when discussing the positive and negative aspects of multiculturalism.

The director of the movie „Yasmin", Kenny Gleenan, won a prize at the Edinburgh Festival for best British feature. As he says his movie is "between fiction and documentary" because the plot and the characters are not real but the story is quite realistic. Gleenan's movie is about Yasmin who lives with her Pakistani family in the north of England. The whole conflict in this movie is about Yasmin who tries to find her identity but she does not know whether she finds it in her traditional Muslim or in her modern world. So the movie is about (mis-) trust, disappointment and hope.

The main character in the feature film is the young, impulsive and self-confident woman Yasmin Husseini. Then there is her warm-hearted but strict father Khalid Husseini who is powerless to control his children and to guide them "the right way". He really tries hard to stop his son Nasir from becoming a freedom fighter. When Khalid fails, you really feel sympathy for him. Yasmin's younger brother Nasir does not only want to risk his life for Islam but is also fascinated by the opportunities the modern world offers him. The fourth main character is John Bailey, a real Englishman. He is Yasmin's colleague at work and between these two there is a certain connection. It could have ended in love but Yasmin has difficulties being frank about her situation at home. All four characters make a certain development in the movie, some positive, others negative.

The director shows very well which prejudices and problems exist in a complex society and he does not put the blame on the one or the other. It is quite difficult to combine a traditional Muslim and a modern, western life style but the movie shows that people have different possibilities to deal with this problem. I really can recommend the movie to everyone because it shows the conflict from a new and neutral perspective. It is not just one side that makes mistakes and you really start to think about the actuality of these problems. For getting more into a new culture, the movie is expressive, too.

While watching the drama "Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan the viewer gets the impression of how life could be when you are torn between two worlds and cannot decide which one is better for you or how you can combine them. Yasmin is a young Muslim woman who lives two different lifestyles of a typically English woman who lives two different lifestyles at a time: On the one hand, the life in a Muslim community in England, and on the other hand, the lifestyle of a typically English woman in working-class surroundings. When she goes to work, she changes form her traditional Muslim dress into average western style and changes them back when she comes home to her community. The movie deals with the problems of a woman who tries to live two different lifestyles while hiding her background. It deals with the prejudice that English people have got with other religions. I think, the director's intention was to show the audience the invisible war that is going on in England against Muslim people especially after 9/11. I could feel sympathy for Yasmin because I think it must be really hard to live such a life according to the laws of her father and to the expectations of the English people of her. I really like the film because it has made me think about how people can feel when they get rejected. It shows how life can change after such an event like 9/11, and how Islamophobia has grown in the English towns. I would recommend the film because it has got a really good story and subtext. The actors play their roles really well.

The movie „Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan tackles the conflict between traditional Muslim life and western culture that disturbs Yasmin and her family.

Yasmin leads a double life: She is a modern woman working for a social service, going to the bar with her colleague and best friend John, driving a red cabrio, smoking and drinking occasionally. But as soon as she comes to her neighborhood she changes clothes and covers her hair in a black veil. At home her husband Faisal from Pakistan, the so-called "import" she has been married to by her parents, is talking to his goat, the only friend he has he has in this new world. Yasmin's father Khalid, a traditional but rather open-minded Muslim, cannot accept her wish for a divorce.

After 9/11 things are getting even more complicated. Yasmin's brother Nasir who has been dealing drugs, finds his own way of compensating his guilt and hate. He ends his bad western habits and does what he believes a good Muslim should do. Finally unpredicted events force Yasmin to end her double life and to decide between her traditional roots and the friendship with John.

It is easy to relate to the character of Yasmin and to understand how she is feeling. Even though her father strikes with his traditional views at first you feel more and more sympathy for him as he turns out to be honest and tolerant. He abhors his son for saying 9/11 was "stylish". The development of Nasir is a very shocking and still realistic one.

The film is a very dramatic portray at an uneasy reality with prejudice, crime, and love. It tells the story of a woman who is torn between her Muslim roots and a modern life.

Yasmin.

Yasmin Husseini is a young woman of Pakistani background living in a small Scottish town together with her arranged husband Faysal. Yasmin has to live in 2 worlds in order to meet her father's and her own expectations; she is torn between her 2 roles of a western and a traditional Muslim woman and when the incident of 9/11 takes place, she seems to crash and finally has to make a decision… The director manages very well to depict the situation of British thinking women growing up in a whole Muslim surrounding. Especially the problems Yasmin has to cope with after 9/11 are very lucidly brought to screen. Also the audience gets very close to the protagonist and is able to really feel with Yasmin. As a gist, the movie is worth seeing.

It is a "story" built on top of a "topic". The story is about the consequences of the September 11 attacks on the daily life of a young British Muslim woman. The topic is Islam's shift towards conservatism (and fundamentalism) that many people blame on The West's "fight against terrorism".

As such the story is necessarily incomplete, stereotypical, and unreal. But, as such, it does a pretty good job of making me think of what could be real --- the fear, the hate, the horror of law abuse, the consequences.

The movie is also well balanced: smiles and tears are spared wisely. I just did not like the end.

This is a great movie that shows the hardships that not only Muslims, but all immigrants face in foreign lands. While the director does not attack the receiving countries, the film only portrays those committing the injustice in a bad light and does not throw everyone in the same boat. I enjoyed this movie a lot and I recommend it to anyone who keeps an open mind when it comes to the rights of immigrants. We sometimes forget that all of us are brothers and sisters and it is just as important to look out for the good of our fellow man as it is our direct family. Particularly in this current time, Muslims are feeling the heat and are the targets of the ignorant, and naive. Education and critical thinking is the solution, but so many of us do not like to think critically when we go about our daily lives. It says in the Quran that to kill one innocent human being is to God as if we have killed the entire humanity. But we like to focus on the actions of a few and apply their interpretations to all Muslims. By that logic can we blame those people committing bad acts for hating all Americans? Or all Westerners? This film may provoke some good thinking that we need badly. It did for me.

The film "Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan depicts the effects September 11, 2001 has had on the Muslim community in England. Yasmin, a young woman, and her hometown in North England act as an example of the growing tensions between Muslims and Non-Muslims. Yasmin's place between the two worlds is endangered by the bogus marriage with her cousin Faysal, who is not able to cope with his new home, and by the distrust she experiences at work and even in her free time. In the end, she has to find her own way and learn to accept her own roots.

Yasmin herself is an emancipated and rather modern woman who seems to be full of the joys of life. Her two worlds are represented by her father, the custodian of the local mosque, who is a very traditional man although he allows her a lot of freedom, and by her friend John, an Englishman, who does not know about Yasmin's other life. The latter is also the one I can identify with most because he is abruptly pulled into a conflict of religions he really only knows from television and so he reacts with rejection to protect himself. Yasmin's own brother Nasir also leads two lives. As a good Muslim he helps his father at the mosque, but drugs in his spare time he deals.

The roles of the victim and the culprit as we often see them are reversed in this film, and Kenny Glenaan shows that the Muslim world, as incomprehensible and unfamiliar it might be to others, has had to suffer in its own way since 9/11. Around this complex storyline Glenaan creates an atmosphere which, on the one hand, is very tense and sometimes even arouses a feeling of hopelessness when Yasmin is with her family, and, on the other hand, is full of prejudices, narrow-mindedness and mistrust whenever she enters the "other world". When Yasmin's two worlds clash, you can easily imagine the lack of prospects she experiences and the struggle to maintain her own identity.

"Yasmin" is an intelligent film with a complex storyline portraying the Muslim community in England after September 11, 2001. It presents a different point of view to the conflict of cultures and makes you think about your own position in the multicultural world.