Year of release: 2004
Casim, a young second-generation Scottish-Pakistani man falls in love with Roisin, an Irish music teacher at his sister's school. But Casim is expected to marry a cousin from Pakistan and, despite being passionately in love with Roisin, feels initially unable to renege on the arrangement his parents made out of loyalty to his family.
Filed under: Asian British | Inter-ethnic romance | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 2002
Based on Meera Syal's autobiographical novel, Anita & Me centres on the bright 12-year-old Meena growing up with her Punjabi parents in a small town in the Midlands in 1972.
Filed under: Asian British | Coming of age
Year of release: 2002
Jess's (Parminder Nagra) sartorial transformation
In Hounslow, west London. 18 year old Jess Bhamra dreams of playing professional football like her idol David Beckham, but her Punjabi Sikh parents have more conventional plans for her: a law degree and marriage. Jules, a white female striker, spots Jess playing park football and invites her to join the local women's team.
Filed under: Asian British | Coming of age | Fathers | Mothers | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 1992
A comedy about a group of Asian women from Birmingham who go on a day trip to Blackpool beach. Their little adventure provides them with an opportunity to share their secrets and to reassess their lives. It turns into a journey of self-discovery.
Filed under: Asian British | Inter-ethnic romance | Journey | Patriarchy | Religion | Secrets
Year of release: 2007
Boiled down from a large literary work, though not a literary film, Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane is based on Monica Ali's prize-winning novel and resulted in an unnecessary flurry when the Bangladeshi community in the eponymous area of east London prevented it from being shot there. It's a small, touching picture about 17-year-old Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) being sent from her Bangladeshi village to marry a pompous, insensitive, self-deceiving older man in London. She bears him a son who dies, and two daughters, and much of the movie takes place in her early 30s when she's trying to break out of her housebound existence, get over her homesickness and come to terms with exile.
Filed under: Asian British | Daughters | Fathers | Mothers
Year of release: 2004
Shots of an aeroplane in the opening sequence mark the arrival of the UK-based NRI Balraj and his American friend Darcy, two single men in possession of a good fortune and in want of a wife, to Armitsar. Like Austen’s Mr and Mrs Bennet, Chadha’s Mr and Mrs Bakshi are looking for eligible suitors for their four daughters, Jaya, Lalita, Maya and Lakhi. An Indian wedding (the first of a total of four featured in the film) provides the social setting where Lalita and Darcy, Jaya and Balraj first meet. In keeping with the source novel and the generic conventions of the romantic comedy, the paths of their courtships are rocky. However, it is not the parents’ objection to the inter-ethnic romance the couple has to overcome. Admittedly, Darcy has to be educated in all things Indian – be it dancing, drumming or even keeping his Indian-style trousers from falling down – to recognise that his ethnic snobbery and arrogance vis à vis ‘Hicksville, India’, as he derogatively calls Amritsar, are out of place before he is worthy of the beautiful bride Lalita. In all other respects, Bride and Prejudice downplays the cultural difference, emphasising instead the commonalities between Indian and Western cultures. Lalita is every bit as independent and assertive as any Western woman and, except for the fact that she wears stunning saris (as well as Western clothes), has little in common with idealised notions of traditional Indian femininity promoted by Bollywood.
Filed under: Asian British | Inter-ethnic romance | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 1999
Salford, 1971. Proud Pakistani chip shop owner George Khan lives in a terraced house with his white wife Ella and their seven children. Determined to raise them as traditional Muslims, George sends sons Nazir, Abdul, Tariq, Saleem, Maneer and Sajid to the mosque and makes daughter Meenah dress in saris. However the kids will not submit quietly.
Filed under: Asian British | Coming of age | Fathers | Mothers | Patriarchy | Queer diaspora | Religion
Year of release: 2005
Courtesy of Sandhya Suri
I for India is a chronicle of immigration in Britain, from the Sixties to the present day, as seen through the eyes of one Asian family and their movie camera.
Filed under: Asian British | Daughters | Documentary | Family memories | Fathers
Year of release: 2009
The drama explores the relations between a grief stricken father and his three daughters. Set in London, the time is now, the family of Indian origin- part of the UK diaspora.
Filed under: Asian British | Fathers
Year of release: 1985
Omar, a young, unemployed British-Pakistani, cares for his ailing, alcoholic, socialist father in a decaying South London ground-floor flat overlooking a crumbling rail track. His father (known as Papa to everyone in the family) urges him to go to college, but in the meantime gets him a job washing cars in his Uncle Nasser's garage. Half jokingly, Papa also asks Nasser to find him a girlfriend.
Filed under: Asian British | Inter-ethnic romance | Queer diaspora | South Asian diaspora