A Jihad for Love.

"Six years after un-closeting the Orthodox Jewish homosexual community in Trembling Before G-d, filmmaker Sandi Dubowski brings his documentary mensch sensibility to open another dialogue on faith and tolerance, this time on behalf of Muslim gays and lesbians around the world," writes Kevin B Lee in Slant. "Jihad for Love, by first-time feature director Parvez Sharma [blog], follows the globetrotting, multi-character arc of Dubowski's film; by establishing the worldwide ubiquity of homosexuality among many believers as a structural lynchpin of their rhetorical argument for tolerance, Sharma and producer Dubowski opt for breadth over depth."

Updated.

"Mr Sharma's film emphasizes testimony over context to such a degree that it feels at first of little use to anyone except gay Muslims who might take comfort in knowing they're not alone," writes Nathan Lee in the New York Times. "But the documentary gains depth of feeling as it goes and even develops something of a nail-biting narrative as it follows a clique of Iranian men who flee to central Turkey in hopes of applying for political asylum in Canada."

"[A]s in Trembling Before G_d, the movie leaves open a provocative question: If you pick and choose which tenets of a religion apply to you, is it still a religion?" Jim Ridley in the Voice.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Sharma "about the difficulties involved in making the film, reclaiming the word 'jihad,' and designing his own Bollywood film posters as a child."

Updates: "From the outset, Mr Sharma's A Jihad for Love, which opens today at IFC Center, makes one thing clear," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun:

It is not, as some might expect, a story of alienation. Unlike other recent documentaries that have tackled religious and moralistic themes - such as Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire, which lent a soapbox to every side of the abortion debate - A Jihad for Love is not about irreconcilable differences or two groups that regard each other with disdain.

Mostly, the film presents men and women who are passionate about their faith, who have tried to live life as prescribed by their parents and spiritual leaders, but who cannot ignore the fact that their source of love and comfort, of lust and consolation, is a person of the same sex. Their story is not one of alienation, but of determined reconciliation.

"Sharma, a gay writer, reporter, and filmmaker born in India, is himself a Muslim, and his lack of condescension toward the religious communities he captures on film is A Jihad for Love's greatest strength," writes Michael Koresky in indieWIRE. "Sharma excels at depicting the effects of repressive regimes on individuals in a matter-of-fact manner, without the aid of overly cute populist doc tricks or direct audience appeals; one comes away with the sense that Islamic governmental law based on religion isn't so different from nonsecular Westernized rationalizations for discrimination."

Posted by dwhudson at May 21, 2008 1:08 AM