Strong and Moving!

Simply A Masterpiece

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Yasmin is a low-key, sensitively handled examination of racial and religious prejudice filmed in Keighley. It is scripted by Keighley-born Simon Beaufoy, already the writer of successful Yorkshire-based films like The Full Monty (1997) and Blow Dry (2001) – here, Beaufoy is in (for him) uncommonly sombre frame of mind, exchanging his usual light- hearted comical style for something much 'heavier' and more serious. Yasmin focuses on the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, detailing how the atrocities affect – and irrevocably change – the lives of a Muslim community living in the north of England.Yasmin (Archie Panjabi) leads a curious double life. She lives on a dead-end terraced street opposite her own father and brother, sharing her house – but not her bed – with a 'husband' named Faysal (Shahid Ahmed). Her marriage to Faysal is a sham, a mere gimmick, a union of convenience designed to get him approval for his full British passport. Every day, Yasmin heads off to work at a disability unit – stopping off en route to change out of her Muslim clothing and remove her wedding ring. At work, she is no longer the dutiful Muslim wife; instead she becomes a sassy, outgoing young woman with very 'Western' sensibilities of permissiveness. There is also a clear bond between Yasmin and her work colleague John (Steve Jackson). Things change in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. As quickly as they embraced her as a friend, Yasmin's workmates suddenly treat her with mistrust, ignorance and dislike. Piece by piece, Yasmin is forced to confront her existence and make painful choices. Her impetuous younger brother Nasir (Syed Ahmed) vows to join the fight against the Western forces by going to Afghanistan to become a freedom fighter; her husband Faysal is indefinitely imprisoned as a potential terror suspect (despite there being no evidence); her father (Renu Setna) meanwhile tries desperately to encourage his family and neighbours not to retaliate as the cultural tensions between whites and Muslims threaten to boil over into violence.Yasmin is a worthy film for sure, taking some topical themes in its stride. The performances are generally good, especially Setna as Yasmin's outspoken father and Panjabi in the title role. Less effective is Syed Ahmed as her brooding brother – it's not so much that he plays his role badly, more that it's a badly written part – the typical 'angry young man', a clichéd character in this type of film if ever there was one. The many different faces of cultural prejudice are handled pretty responsibly. The film doesn't whitewash its viewpoints like so many of these films do. Characters from both cultures are shown in positive and negative lights. More skilfully, the film remembers that real people aren't just one-dimensional caricatures – in real life, there are many shades of grey between 'prejudiced' and 'not-prejudiced', and there is often a lot of ambivalence about the way people from one culture feel about someone from another. Yasmin doesn't paint its characters in broad, simplistic strokes – it's more balanced than that. The biggest shortcoming with the film is that amid all its worthiness it occasionally ends up being a little dull too. It is never preachy thankfully, but there are patches where one finds one's mind wandering inattentively. These lulls are not frequent – and they never last long enough to ruin the film – but they are there nonetheless. Overall, Yasmin is a thoughtful look at race relationships, built around an event that shook the world and changed – perhaps irreversibly – the way that many people from different cultural backgrounds feel about each other.

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!

Kai Zimmermann"Yasmin" is a movie by Kenny Glenaan produced in 2004, and deals with Yasmin, a Pakistani woman living in an English town who tries to combine the traditional rules of Islam with her longing for freedom. Through the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Yasmin's friends distance from her because of her religion that is rubbished in public. Yasmin lives in a bogus marriage with Faysal, who arouses suspicion to have connections to terrorist organisations. Yasmin is a social worker and tries to fulfill her father's expectations. But she also loves to party with John and her other western friends. Yasmin's father does not tolerate her western lifestyle, adheres strictly to the rules of Islam and condemns the terrorist attacks at the same time. His son, Yasmin's brother Nasir, also switches between the strict rules for Muslim and the western way of life. He joins a fanatic branch after 9/11. I think Nasir is the most authentic character of the movie. I can empathise with his existence as a Pakistani living in England. The terrorist attacks make the English extremely cautious concerning the Islam and everybody knows the feeling of being excluded from a certain group or community. Kenny Glenaan points out the difficult situation of Muslims living in western societies and the prejudices we have against them and their religion. Glenaan calls attention to our identification process, too. Yasmin's way of becoming an independent woman after the divorce shows that it is worthwhile rebelling against certain rules and creating one's own way. I recommend this film because of its empathetic and pensive scenes. "Yasmin" is about a woman finding her individual lifestyle, something everybody is in search of. So it is a film for everyone.

Film review, "Yasmin" 18/03/07 Falco Peisert The British movie – Yasmin -, released in 2004, deals with the life of a Pakistani woman, in Britain, and how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 influence her life.Yasmin suffers from a bogus marriage with her cousin. In addition, her father, a deeply religious person, hinders Yasmin in adopting the western lifestyle, therefore she has to keep secret the way she dresses and behaves.After the terrorist attacks, her life changes completely. She loses colleague's acceptance and becomes a suspect for the police. Because she loses faith in her friends accepting her innocence of the terrorist attacks, she finds back to the Islam and does not reject it any longer. In the end, she has lost her brother, who has become an extremist.The film focuses on Yasmin and her family members.Yasmin's father is strict and religious therefore he cares about the mosque after work. He educates his son Nasir religiously to be a good Moslem. The father thinks a lot about their old home in Pakistan and his wife, therefore he often dreams of old memories but he does not see reality and his daughter's problems. He also condemns his daughter's decision to leave Faysal. The father obviously rejects any hatred against the western culture after the terrorist attacks and he is very sad and deeply disturbed after Nasir's departure to Pakistan.Yasmin is responsible-minded. She accepts her father's view about the Islam, but she wants to be independent. Yasmin is not prejudice against anyone and she is open-minded to British culture. She accepts her responsibility, to care about her family and to adapt to theIslam pattern in her district.In my view, the director wants to show that immigrants can successfully be assimilated tosociety. But that does not mean that prejudices are eradicated. The situation forimmigrants in a society accepting certain cultures can change and that's the point.I would recommend the film because the depicted impacts for immigrants after the terroristattacks are not fictional.