crossbow0106 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.

m-morhardt 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.

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.

lilbabyl Lia MarthThe movie "Yasmin" by Kenny Glenaan, produced in 2004 ,tells the story of a young Muslim woman in England. She tries to combine living the new western lifestyle, working in town and seeing an Englisman called John with being a good Muslim daughter to her old religious father. This is not always easy but she has her ways to deal with it. All of a sudden on September the 11th 2001 everything changes. As tension between the western and the Islamic world increases people start to treat Yasmin differently. Because she is Muslim her colleagues make fun of her and she is suspended from work finally . And as if that had not been enough, she gets into trouble with her family, too. The cause of Yasmin's problems with her father is the marriage with Faysal, who she only married on her father's will so that he can get the English citizenship.Yasmin rejects Faysal, and so it is even harder for him to get used to the new culture and circumstances. But not only Faysal has his problems with living in England. Nasir, Yasmin's younger brother has been a drug dealer for quite some time. This might not be the best avocation but with September 11th Nasir's live takes such a rapid turn that one would even figure this job, to be better than what he sees as his philosophy of life then. He meets new people who sway him so extremely that he decides to become part of a fanatic branch. This is the feature of the film that I figure the most impotent. Yasmin is a good example of all the everyday struggle Muslims had to handle in this time. But the story of Nasir is the most touching part of the whole film. It brought tears to my eyes. He decides to go to Palestine. He will most probably kill himself! He is really convinced of all this hatred that he is preached . This is so dramatic to me because he could be every young Muslim having problems in a culture that is not his origin and searching for a sense in life.I recommend this film to everyone who has a good heart and who sympathizes with people that might not have such a good and easy life as most of us Germans do.