Year of release: 2004
South Wales, the present. Teenage single mother Leigh-Anne Williams lives in a council flat with her baby Rebecca. Her brother Gavin and their friends Stephen and Robbie store stolen goods there. She is not popular with her neighbours, especially the Turkish-born Hassan Osman, who lives with his daughter Julie.
Filed under: Black British | Crime | Mothers
Year of release: 2011
On 10 September, 1964, Germany’s one-millionth ‘guest worker’ was welcomed. Spanning a period of no less than forty-five years, this film by sisters Yasemin Samdereli (director) and Nesrin Samdereli (screenplay) tells the story of guest worker number one-million-and-one – a man named Hüseyin Yilmaz and his family.
Filed under: Family memories | Fathers | Journey | Mothers | Turkish German
Year of release: 1998
Anita is a 'babymother', raising two children with the help of her mother Edith on a rundown estate in north-west London. Byron, her babies' father and a local reggae star, casually invites her to perform in his show, but doesn't follow up the offer. Frustrated, Anita sets up her own act with friends Sharon and Yvette. When Byron turns up to apologise, she rebuffs him. Anita's first performance at a party goes well until Byron arrives with Anita's rival Dionne, who fights with Anita.
Filed under: Black British | Daughters | Mothers | Secrets
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: 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
Referred to as British Boyz N The Hood, compared to Juice and Ratcatcher, inspired by Ken Loach's Kes, Saul Dibb's feature film debut Bullet Boy is the story of a futile attempt to break out of a criminal milieu that ends with the protagonist's killing.
Filed under: Black British | Coming of age | Crime | Mothers | Sons
Year of release: 2011
Verena S. Freytag's film centres on Pellin, a young single mother with three children living in a high-rise block in Berlin. She is of Turkish descent but her ethnicity is of no relevance to the story. Pellin tries to make ends meet as a tattoo artist but loses her job and is about to lose custody for her children when one of her children accidentally takes some ecstasy pills which Pellin's drug-dealing boyfriend left in the flat. Her last chance is a mother-child-cure on the Baltic sea in Germany.
Filed under: Crime | Mothers | Turkish German
Year of release: 1993
Café au lait is an ethnic romantic comedy that centres on Lola, a beautiful light-brown-skinned woman, of Caribbean descent and Christian, and her two lovers, Jamal, an African diplomant’s son and a Muslim, and Félix, a white, working-class Jew. She is expecting a baby but she is unsure which of her two lovers fathered the child and enlists the support of both to help her through pregnancy and motherhood.
Filed under: Inter-ethnic romance | Mothers | Secrets
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: 1996
In this autobiographical documentary Seyhan Derin, who was born in Turkey and grew up in Germany, explores her parents' migratory history, focusing in particular on her mother's experience.
Filed under: Daughters | Documentary | Mothers | Patriarchy | Turkish German