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.
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.