Mostly Muslim Movies

My parents were teachers in a small Christian school when I was growing up.  They signed a contract foregoing movies and they stuck to it. The same church that sponsored the school was struggling to work all this out.  I remember being properly shocked when my Sunday School teacher used ET for an illustration.  VHS put an end to all pretense.  Movies were back in swing just in time for my adolescence and I've found it a delicious naughty pleasure ever since.
But now I've gone a step further--ahh, the slippery slope.
I've gone Muslim--mostly.
I'm finding the films of our counterpoint interesting.  They make new all those old problems of life by dressing it up in what is for me a costume.  It is a pleasure to learn and grow.

Sabah is about a woman trying to work out a life between her family's traditionalism and her own need to explore.  There's a sweet love story.  It's sort of  Jane Austen in a hijab.

Arranged follows the lives of two young women, one Orthodox Jew and one traditional Muslim as they go through their respective processes of finding a husband.  I love the way they support each other, and the best moment in the movie when the Muslim is mistaken for a Sephardic Jew.

Salmon Fishing in Yemen  delighted me with a Muslim Jesus.  It was unexpected in this oddball love story.  The movie is truly beautiful both in how it was filmed and the literary frame it works in.

Children of Heaven has been mentioned before, but if you have children this film is an excellent introduction to Muslim Culture.  A boy loses his sister's shoes.  His family is too poor to pay for new, so the two share his shoes.  Charming heartbreak all around.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is mostly set in India rather than being Indian--Muslim or Hindu, but it's interesting.  All that thinking about death, which is also thinking about life.  The choices and opportunities near the end of life.  Death seems to walk in a veil until we are wearing it.  Sometimes it's good to give it a think.