Ae Fond Kiss...

Year: 2004
Production Country: United Germany / Spain / France / Great Britain / Italy
Directed by Ken Loach
Featuring Atta Yaqub / Eva Birthistle / Shamshad Akhtar

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A post 9/11 cross-cultural romance is the focus of Ken Loach’s award-winning feature, set in Glasgow.

“Eva Birthistle rips through the story's politics to reveal Roisin's naked emotions and inner strength, delivering one of the most memorable performances in a British movie this year.”
Alan Morrison, empireonline.com

A rare Ken Loach foray into romance, Ae Fond Kiss follows the courtship of Casim, a second generation Pakistani DJ, and Roisin, a white teacher at a Glasgow Roman Catholic school. When their relationship is discovered the culture clash becomes immediately apparent, as Casim’s family voice their anger at their son dating a ‘goree’ (white girl) and Roisin faces the disapproval of her priest.

Despite a career that continually returns to heated political polemic, Loach has seldom before explored race as a theme. Paul Laverty was inspired to write the screenplay when a friend described the Glaswegian Muslim community’s fears of attack following anti-Islam sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11. Here he uses a Romeo and Juliet narrative to explore the causes and consequences of racism.

Tensions in a Pakistani family living in 1970s Britain also feature in Damien O’Donnell’s box office hit East Is East (1999).

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In The Mood For Love

Can such veterans of realist film-making as Ken Loach and Paul Laverty get close enough to the racial divides of Glasgow youth to make a bi-racial love story? James Mottram visits the set of Ae Fond Kiss.