IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY (Shelley Saywell, Canada). 90 minutes. Some subtitles.
Saturday (May 1), 7 pm, Royal May 9, 6:45 pm, Isabel Bader. Rating: NN
Using the death of Mississauga teen Aqsa Parvez as a starting point, Shelley Saywell probes the murders of young girls in Muslim families. She interviews Aqsa’s friends and supporters before travelling to Dallas to talk to the mother of two young girls who were murdered by their father, and another young girl almost suffocated to death by her brother.
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Strangely, Saywell wastes the key moment in the film, when teenaged boys and girls at Parvez’s high school comment that the killings have nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with male power.
I understand Saywell’s passion for giving voice to young women coping with the controlling men in their Muslim families. But the result is a film that disturbs as much by its demonization of Islam as by the murders it describes.
