Parvez Sharma’s brave documentary about homosexuality in the Muslim world presents a brutally honest, eye-opening look at gay and lesbian individuals who continue to practice their religion, despite its blunt, often violent rejection of their orientation.
Jihad for Love (2008)
A Jihad for Love is the world's first feature documentary to explore the complex global intersections between Islam and homosexuality. Parvez enters the many worlds of Islam by illuminating multiple stories as diverse as Islam itself. The film travels a wide geographic arc presenting us lives from India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa and France. Always filming in secret and as a Muslim, Parvez makes the film from within the faith, depicting Islam with the same respect that the film's characters show for it. --© First Run Features [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Reviews
As it examines the point where sexuality and Islam meet in seven very different cultures, the film becomes far more universal than we expect.
Properly promoted, the honest humanity of this festival fave has the potential to attract crossover crowds.
A much-needed reminder that the foundation for any great religion is love and tolerance.
A Jihad for Love is a dispatch from the outer limits of marginalization: a documentary on devout Muslims struggling with their homosexuality.
The accounts are powerful, but so many of the interviewees' faces are blurred to preserve their anonymity that it feels like you're watching A Jihad for Love through a shower curtain.
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?
This material is the fruit of years of research, but ultimately, an unanswered question haunts A Jihad for Love (and proves its undoing): Why would gay Muslims stay true to a religion that hurts them?
Parvez Sharma shares the fundamentalist Muslim perspective, which will look depressingly familiar to anyone who has seen the other films.
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by: Billdave 5/22