The European Templeton Film Award of the Year is presented on behalf of the US-based Templeton Foundation by the International Interchurch Film Organisation INTERFILM and the Conference of European Churches (CEC). The prize includes a cheque for €10’000 and inscribed certificate. It is awarded to films which
- have high artistic merit;
- lend expression to a human viewpoint in keeping with the message of the Scripture, or which stimulate debate;
- make audience sensitive to spiritual and social values and questions
- and have already received an Ecumenical Award during the year in question.

For the 8^th European John Templeton Film Award of the Year 2004

an Ecumenical Jury has chosen

Yasmin is a second generation Pakistani immigrant whose zest for life contrasts with the motherless family demands. An established social worker, she is well integrated into a deprived area of Northern England. Her father is a devout Muslim and keeper of the local mosque, while her brother is involved in the counter-culture of the drug scene. Following the 2001 Al Qaeda attack against the political and economic centre of the Western world, the counter terrorist action of the police radicalises susceptible young muslims. All these events are reflected in the changes of attitude of Yasmin's friends and colleagues towards her and her community.

While set in Britain, "Yasmin" presents a subject that is affecting the whole world. Yasmin courageously seeks a way to be herself both within her Pakistani origins but also in the surrounding Western society. Since 9/11, Yasmin has become an icon of many Muslims who are experiencing an awakening and a reconciliation with their cultural heritage and with their faith. The film shows the search for alternatives and personal identity in the confrontation between secular Western culture and radical Islamic ideas. The aesthetic quality of the film also commended itself to the judging panel: it's story-telling message is easy to follow but potent in its depth.

The film won the award of the Ecumenical Jury at the International Film Festival Locarno 2004. Archie Panjabi, playing the title role, is named European Shooting Star 2005 and will attend the Berlinale Talent Campus.

Hans Werner Dannowski

Sermon
held on the occasion of the awarding of the 8th European Templeton Film Award
to „YASMIN“ by Kenny Glenaan
Matthäuskirche, Berlin-Tiergarten, 13th February 2005

I want to use words from the Thora, the bible of the Jewish and the Old Testament of the Christian community, and from the Hebrews, a late writing of the New Testament of the Christians, and put them together with the many images from the film „Yasmin“ on the experience of Muslims to form a cautious interreligious discourse.

Thus, we read in the book Leviticus 19, 32-34: “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

And the Hebrews (13, 14) offer the following passage as a summary of the considerations on the wandering  people of God of the old and the new Covenant: “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.”

Dear congregation! At dawn, two men leave the house. The father first, the son follows two metres behind him. This distance is not accidental. This distance signifies respect and deference that the younger pays the older. “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head”. It is a patriarchal family structure that seems like a remnant of the old days that has been taken over to our days. This culture is strange as if blown accidentally into a different space. Finally, the house of God which the two walk towards to, the mosque, is no splendid building that would be appropriate for religious adoration. It seems to be a former garage or factory hall – to which one has to open a gate made of corrugated iron. Inside however, the room is carefully carpeted with red prayer-mats. Then the boy stands in front of the microphone, puts his hands over his ears for the revelation reception and the voice of the muezzin resounds from the speakers in the streets and above the houses: “Allah akbar!”, “God is greater”, “Glory to God, to the Lord of the worlds, to the compassionate, to the merciful, to the king of the Day of Judgement”. Strange how this Muslim call to prayer sounds in the valley in which, until now, one only knew the sound of church bells. Later, we will see the father as he wipes the graffiti scribbling from the door of the mosque: “Paki go home.” This is the beginning of Kenny Glenaan’s film “Yasmin”. You immediately know what is happening. People live in a town which is not naturally their home. The town in which the story takes place, is not named. An industrial zone – that is obvious. Many scenes are supposed to have been turned in Keighley, that is in Yorkshire, North England. Leeds and Manchester are not far away. Actually, the story could take place everywhere, in nearly every big western city. Take for example Kreuzberg, a district in Berlin. Turkish people here, Indian and Pakistani people there. Hindus, Muslims. They come to a country which has nearly one and a half thousand years of Christian history behind and in it. First as sought for workers, as unwanted immigrants later. In every way: strangers. “And if a stranger sojourn in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you.” It seems to be an ancient problem. It can be repressed for a long time. But all of a sudden, it becomes prevalent, it dominates political debates and decisions: this total difference and strangeness of the other – and it being just around the corner.

I think it is this mixture of strangeness and closeness in the story that Kenny Glenaan tells in “Yasmin” to which I awake. Questions and still more questions descend upon me with the first images of the film. What do I actually know about all this? When did you last go to a mosque and when did you last speak to people with a Muslim background? Yasmin’s story, this story of a clash of civilisations, will happen thousands of times in your nearest environment – what will you notice? You are well protected in your circle of friends and acquaintances, your church community, your district from the crucial tests that so many have to endure in this clash of strangeness on strangeness. The nurses in the kindergartens, the teachers in primary and comprehensive schools – as representatives, they have to live it through. In what world do you actually live? I feel hopelessness grow inside me.

A nearly monstrous crucial test that wants to divide a young person into two parts: that is the world in which the protagonist of Kenny Glenaan’s story , in which Yasmin lives. Yasmin is not only a beautiful, but also a handy and self-confident woman.  It is a pity that Archie Panjabi, the actress who plays Yasmin Hussein, cannot be here with us today, but she has to be on stage next door in the Berlinale Palast as the Shooting Star 2005 at the same time.

Yasmin lives in her habitual world in a homely atmosphere. The cohesion of the family that she cooks and cares for, goes above everything. There is the religious father whose love is strict and in agreement with tried and tested patterns. At some point, he will hit the table with his fist saying: “In this house you will show respect.” Additionally, there is the mentally challenged cousin whom Yasmin was forced to marry and who finally even wants to rape her. And there is the absolutely different world which demands Yasmin’s full commitment during day time. In which she -  as a social worker and with the help of a clumsy Englishman who is two heads taller than her and other colleagues – cares for disabled people. These are two completely different identities that she changes into each time.

When I saw the scene which reoccurs like a ritual and in which she changes her clothes in the open field, for the first time, the way Yasmin takes off her veil, her gown and her shoes to exchange them for the tight jeans, the blouse with the low neckline and the high heeled shoes made me think that she was preparing for a some love adventure. But no, her behaviour is as unusual as it is plausible: The change of clothes is a change of identity, and the change of identities is represented in her outward appearance.

How does identity actually arise, how does it grow and change? How did you and I become what we are? Childhood, education, social environment, religion, political situation: all this influences the formation of a personality. It is a long and complicated process which makes us what we are. If I understand it correctly, Kenny Glenaan’s film “Yasmin” gives this a watchable and sensual form. Identity originates from looks. “Yasmin” is a film of looks. Looks that follow you from the windows down the streets; looks that judge you in a pub. It is looks combined with words that welcome me in this world saying: It is good to have you here. Looks that open the future for me and give me a sense of community. But it is looks as well that fail to notice me, that exclude me, that make me aware of my being different and strange. Exactly because my identity includes my bodily appearance, it is looks that show me how things are for me.

And this is the crisis in the dramatic story that “Yasmin” tells: it happens through a change in the looks. It is the 11th September 2001 that changes everything. The sight of the tumbling Twin Towers in New York lets certainty grow with some younger Muslims that the “monster of oppression” – to quote Osama Bin Laden - , that the USA are to be defeated. Yasmin’s younger brother will disappear into one of Al Qaeda’s training camps, being a “good Muslim” as he says himself. And the Muslim community of the North English town is caught in the net of the anti-Muslim attitude that is spreading like a disease. Absurd search, arrest and interrogation methods become frequent. Rumours spread. The looks of Yasmin’s colleagues become cold, they roam, cannot find their aim anymore. And even one of the colleagues who has nearly become a friend, cautiously withdraws.

I neither can nor want to tell you about further scenes from the film. Some of you have watched “Yasmin” this afternoon. Others will hopefully have the opportunity of doing so soon. I want to put one last image from the end of the film into words for you to show you what this film might mean to us in our Christian context. The father has read the son’s letter that is telling him that the son has left for Afghanistan and Palestine. The stocky man seems hopeless. “I am growing old, Yasmin”, he says. I am growing old, and I do not understand the world anymore. The daughter walks slowly towards him, embraces him tenderly. There is affection in this gesture, as well as distance I think. Two generations that belong together and yet are making different experiences.

Vilem Flusser, the Jewish philosopher, has made a distinction as far as his own experiences of identity are concerned that , I think, can be transferred on other religious communities. There are Jews, he says, who become Jews through the looks of other Jews and there are Jews who become Jews through the looks of non-Jews. This is what separates integrated Jews from assimilated Jews. To transfer it on our film: the father has obviously gained his Muslim identity through other Muslims, their tradition and their behaviour. He represents the best sides of the Islam: religious, without compromise and the force of peace is his faith. Hate only breeds hate, and war and terror and more misery. This is where Yasmin agrees with her father.

She refuses to give her blessing to her brother who ask her for it before going to his revolutionary battle. She has not become Muslim through other Muslims, but through non-Muslims. She who has not been to the mosque for five years, will return there. But she will also return to her work, I suppose, and she will try to stand firm against the looks of the others, until the attitude of her colleagues will probably have changed.

And what are the consequences that come to my mind for you and me, people who have mostly a Christian background? I became a Christian through the looks and the experiences of Christians. For most of you, the situation will be similar, I guess. Is it not time, even high time, to see our own identity as a Christian not as a closed system, but to define it anew with the help of the looks of non-Christians, with the help of the looks of the Muslims who live among us? The mutual ignorance and overlooking would then be at an end. Certainly, the differences would not disappear if Christians and Muslims really looked into each other’s eyes. Maybe they would even grow. But we would live and behave differently with each other. We think we are the landlords, we who have always lived in the western countries; we think we are hosts – sometimes generous, sometimes petty – who allow the other, the stranger a “hopefully” temporary right of residence. But have you not been strangers as well in the land of Egypt?, asks the Jewish Thora. Is not Christianity shaped deep down by the difference between what faithful people live of, and the reality that surrounds them? The counter fact, the visionary  is still part of it! “For here we have no continuing city”, says the text in the Hebrews, “but we seek one to come!” Back then, Christians were still on their way. And are we not still?! No, not hosts, but guests of life: that is what we all are, guests of God on this wonderful earth. Guests in the shared miracle of this life: to me, this is the definition of Christian identity through the looks of others. And I will not have to talk about “German leading culture” and “Christian basic values” that quickly again. Certainly, being different guests, one has to communicate. One has to learn how to establish a careful contact, a whispering sensibility that does not scare away the truth with a loud appearance.

There are many other things left to say and to consider. I hope that “Yasmin” will continue to occupy our minds. And thus, I thank the jury for its choice and Kenny Glenaan for his wonderful film. I close my sermon with the hope for a future which will have intensive eye contact  and therefore I say
Amen.