BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Beth Robinson 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.

frundsberg-franzi While watching the movie "Yasmin", directed by Kenny Glenaan, you get a realistic picture of a Muslim family from Pakistan living in the north of England. As you can guess from the title, the plot is focused on emancipated Yasmin Husseini, who switches between her traditional Muslim and her modern western life. After the incidents of 9/11, an arranged marriage and a night in prison, she withdraws from her "double-life" and comes back to her Muslim origin. Without using any spectacular visual effects "Yasmin" catches you with a lot authenticity. All of the different but interesting and individual characters make the film very dynamic. On the one hand, there is the conservative father Khalid, who just tries to conform to his western life without losing his Muslim tradition. Yasmin's brother Nasir, on the other hand, is fed up with his life in the western culture. Another important person is Faisal, the "import" and Yasmin's husband, who is not able to communicate with anyone of the Husseinis but a goat. Yasmin as the main character has to cope with all these family members and tries not to hurt or disappoint anyone. You will see how she manages all that, although going on with her ordinary modern lifestyle.I want to recommend this movie to all of you because it shows a point of view from "the other side" of dealing with terror and religious identity. You are demanded to think about Muslim culture and our established prejudices.

bjtborthakur 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.

joul_berlin The film "Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan tells the story of a young Pakistani woman from North England and the problems she has to cope with after the terrorist attack of 9/11. Yasmin lives in two different worlds. On the one hand, she has adapted the lifestyle of the western civilisation, and on the other hand, she has to obey certain rules of the Islamic faith to fulfil her father's wishes like the bogus marriage with her cousin Faysal . After 9/11 her colleagues and friends confront her with mistrust and suspicion . Her husband is being arrested and her young brother joins a fundamentalist organisation whereas Yasmin tries to become aware of her own identity and religion. Yasmin is a strong and vivid main character. She is likable and very human,that is why you can identify with her most. Other important characters are Yasmin's father and brother. Her father is a very religious man, sometimes a bit narrow-minded but mostly reasonable. His son Nazir used to be a drug dealer but after the terrorist attacks a fundamental Islamic organisation finds a way to influence him and finally makes him join them. Nazir is fascinated by the fundamental ideology whereas his father is strictly against this kind of organisations. From my point of view one cannot reject any of the characters, they all have reasons for their behaviour. Due to his totally different cultural background and since he cannot understand his new surroundings at all, Faysal is more a tragic character than anyone you would absolutely reject, and Nazir is convinced that he is doing right. I guess that it was Glenaan's intention to show how unfairly many Muslims were treated after the terrorist attack of 9/11 and that their religion does not make people criminals. Probably he wanted to show their difficult situation from another point of view. I see the strength of the movie in the metaphorical storytelling realised through the good camera work and sound, and especially through the convincing performance of the actors. What I dislike is the unclear ending of the movie. One can only guess how Yasmin's life is going to be afterwards what the film showed. Due to the great plot and actors I recommend the film.