Year of release: 2008
Courtesy of Wildbunch Distribution, © Carole Bellaïche
Paying homage to Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring, a melodrama about a father and daughter whose close and loving relationship is sacrified for the sake of social conventions, 35 Shots of Rum centres on a similarly close father-daughter bond but lacks the melodramatic affect and concludes on a more optimistic note.
Filed under: Coming of age | Daughters | Fathers
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: 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: 2007
When Slimane, a North African shipyard worker in the French Mediterranean town of Sète, is pushed into early retirement, he decides to use the redundancy money to buy an old boat in the harbour and open a couscous restaurant. The film charts the various obstacles he encounters and the support his extended family and friends provide along the way.
Filed under: Daughters | Ethnic food | Fathers | Maghrebi French
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
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: 2002
This Turkish German coming-of-age story centres on seventeen-year-old Johanna, who lives with her single mother in Cologne. Her one ambition in life is to become a fashion designer but she needs to find the money to study in Paris.
Filed under: Coming of age | Daughters | Fathers | Patriarchy | Secrets | Turkish German
Year of release: 2012
Kuma (courtesy of Wega Film)
When Ayşe celebrates her wedding almost everyone in her Turkish village believes her to have married Hasan who is just a few years her senior. But in fact, she is sent to Vienna as Hasan’s father Mustafa’s second wife. She arrives in Austria and receives a mixed welcome from her new family. At first, Mustafa’s children, some of whom are older than Ayşe, turn their back on the girl. Only Fatma, Mustafa’s wife of many years who is now dying of cancer, seems genuinely pleased: now she can be assured of a good successor to tend to her husband, to whom she has been a loyal and obedient Muslim wife.
A special friendship evolves between the two different women but this relationship is soon put to the test when the family has to face a stroke of fate.
Director Umut Dag’s description of the complex microcosm of a Turkish family living in Vienna displays a great deal of sensitivity in a work that explores the relationship between the old and the new, loyalty and friendship, and is not afraid to broach deep-seated emotions.
Filed under: Daughters | Fathers | Mothers | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 2006
Courtesy of Verve Pictures
Described by Pratbha Parmar as a film about the family, food and love, this ethnic romantic comedy tells the story of Nina Shah, a young Scottish Asian woman, who falls in love with the white Scottish Lisa while preparing to enter into a televised cooking competition.
Filed under: Asian British | Daughters | Ethnic food | Inter-ethnic romance | Queer diaspora | Secrets
Year of release: 2001
The film tells the story of Railla, born in a remote village in Algeria and adopted by a Swiss couple shortly after her birth. Aged nineteen, the beautiful Railla is intent on finding her mother Keltoum in order to confront her about having abandoned her.
Filed under: Daughters | Journey | Maghrebi French | Mothers | Secrets