FILM SYNOPSIS

Written by Simon (The Full Monty, This Is Not A Love Song) Beaufoy, and developed out of months of research and workshops with Muslim communities across the North of England, this timely drama tells the story of a British Muslim woman who finds herself caught up in a post-September 11 nightmare, when her Pakistani-born husband is falsely imprisoned as a terrorist suspect.

Addressing such universal themes as racial prejudice and the conflicts between national and religious identities, Yasmin is also shot through with a peculiarly Northern wit – alert to the many ironies which befall those who consider themselves British, Asian and Muslim. The film premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in August 2004 and will be screened at the Bite The Mango Film Festival and The Times London Film Festival 2004 later this year.

BACKGROUND

She is not devout. With her Midlands accent, her fondness for a pint, her hair-trigger temper. "I haven't been to a mosque in five years," she maintains. "I'm about as much a Muslim as you are." In fact, Yasmin is more overtly racist than most of her white friends and co-workers, capable of angrily dismissing her new husband (an arranged marriage, to faciliate his citizenship) as a "useless bloody Paki."

But the attack on the World Trade Centre alters her world as much as that of any true believer. At first it takes minor, comparatively trifling forms: the casual cruelty of her workmates, for example, pasting a "Yas loves Osama" note on her locker the day after the attack. Or the sight of Muslim men, casting anxious glances upwards the same morning, at planes leaving vapour trails in the sky overhead. But soon the police are entering and searching Islamic households at gunpoint. Before long they come for her, too - storming the house to seize her new husband. All these factors have an unexpected consequence: staring into the mirror, as if doubting her own resolve, Yasmin wraps the veil around her head ...

Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy reportedly worked in collaboration with a number of Islamic community groups across the North of England, generating the script and discussing the issues it raises. The result has the ring of truth: from the stupid machismo of young Asian men wanting to journey to Afghanistan "to fight for our brothers" - but neither so righteous nor devout as to refuse a blowjob from some local girls, when it's offered - to the scenes of Yasmin's father, angrily rejecting a community leader's call for solidarity.

And all the while, radios and televisions play in the background of scenes, like a Greek chorus: a cortege of voices promising justice or retribution (the two, we soon realise, are by no means identical). Perhaps the film's most powerful moment, and its most discomfiting, is its setting of George W Bush's declaration of national self-determination ("Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a Creator. We value every life ..") against footage of British Muslims on the street, clustered in anxious groups.

Originally an actor, Glenaan demonstrates a remarkable ease with his mostly non-professional cast. But he's also a rigorous director, never allowing them to grandstand; the performances are understated, the tone resolutely naturalistic. More important, though, is the film's vision of a polyglot Britain - a valuable, even stirring rejection of the Little England mentality, while at the same time, a tacit admission of the complexity of this debate. No one is entirely right or wrong here; stubbornness and pride make fools of everyone. If the film has a message, it's simply that the first casualty of war might not be truth, but trust.