My Son the Fanatic | |
---|---|
Directed by | Udayan Prasad |
Written by | Hanif Kureishi |
Based on | My Son the Fanatic by Hanif Kureishi |
Produced by | Chris Curling |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Alan Almond |
Edited by | David Gamble |
Music by | Stephen Warbeck |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Feature Film |
Release dates |
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Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £2,134,800 [2] |
Box office | £123,000 [2] |
My Son the Fanatic is a 1997 British comedy drama film directed by Udayan Prasad. It was written by Hanif Kureishi as an adaptation of his short story My Son the Fanatic .
The plot of the film revolves around Parvez, a Pakistani-born taxi driver and a tolerant, secular Muslim. His life takes an unexpected dark turn when his son Farid converts to fundamentalist Islam, leading to a family breakdown and social conflict.
According to Rachel Donadio, The New York Times writer and editor, the film's theme is encapsulated in a pivotal scene:
One of the most revealing insights into Britain's recent social history comes early in My Son the Fanatic, Hanif Kureishi's tender and darkly prescient 1997 film. It’s morning in an unnamed city in northern England, and Parvez, a secular Pakistani immigrant taxi driver brilliantly portrayed by Om Puri, watches Farid, his increasingly devout college-age son, sell his electric guitar. "Where is that going?" Parvez asks Farid as the buyer drives off. "You used to love making a terrible noise with these instruments!" Farid, played by Akbar Kurtha, looks at his father with irritation. "You always said there were more important things than 'Stairway to Heaven'" he says impatiently in his thick northern English accent. "You couldn't have been more right". [3]
On Rotten Tomatoes, My Son the Fanatic has an approval rating of 79% based on 28 reviews. [4]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote Parvez "draws most on our sympathies in this moving, painfully funny film. In Om Puri’s award-caliber performance, the price of happiness is rendingly observed." [5]
Om Prakash Puri, was an Indian actor who appeared in mainstream commercial Hindi films as well as Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, English, Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, and Marathi films, as well as independent and art films and also starred in several international cinema. He is widely regarded as one of the finest actors in world cinema. He won two National Film Awards for Best Actor, two Filmfare Awards and India's fourth highest civilian award Padma Shri in 1990. In 2004, he was made an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
The Mother is a 2003 British drama film directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi. It stars Anne Reid, Daniel Craig, Peter Vaughan, Steven Mackintosh, and Cathryn Bradshaw.
Hanif Kureishi is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. He is known for his film My Beautiful Laundrette and novel The Buddha of Suburbia.
East Is East is a 1999 British comedy-drama film written by Ayub Khan-Din and directed by Damien O'Donnell. It is set in Salford, Lancashire, in 1971, in a mixed-ethnicity British household headed by Pakistani father George and an English mother, Ella.
My Beautiful Laundrette is a 1985 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. The film was one of the first films released by Working Title Films. The film is set in London during the Thatcher years, and reflects the often fraught relationships between members of the Pakistani and English communities at that time, against the backdrop of social changes across the country. The story focuses on Omar, a British man of Pakistani origin, and his reunion and eventual romance with his childhood friend Johnny, now a street punk. The two become the caretakers and business managers of a launderette originally owned by Omar's uncle Nasser.
The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) is a novel by British Pakistani author Hanif Kureishi, which won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel. The novel has been translated into 20 languages and was also made into a four-part drama series by the BBC in 1993.
David James Bamber is an English actor. He has worked in television and theatre. He is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Ayub Khan Din is a British writer and actor. He wrote the BAFTA, BIFA and London Film Critics Circle award-winning film East Is East (1999), adapted from his 1996 Olivier-nominated play of the same name. His 2008 comedy play Rafta, Rafta... won the Olivier Award. He went on to write the film sequel West Is West (2010). On television, he created the Channel 4 comedy-drama Ackley Bridge (2017–2022).
Roger Michell was a South African-born British theatre, television and film director. He was best known for directing films such as Notting Hill and Venus, as well as the 1995 made-for-television film Persuasion.
Mohammed Hanif is a British Pakistani writer and journalist who writes a monthly opinion piece in The New York Times.
My Son the Fanatic is a short story written by Hanif Kureishi first published in The New Yorker in 1994. It was reprinted in Kureishi's 1997 collection of short stories, Love in a Blue Time, and also as a supplement to some editions of The Black Album, and in 1998 as a standalone edition. The short story was also adapted into a film of the same title.
Matteo Garrone is an Italian filmmaker.
Dharavi is a 1992 Hindi film, directed and written by Sudhir Mishra.
Angaar (transl. Fire) is a 1992 Indian Hindi-language crime drama film directed by Shashilal K. Nair. The film stars Jackie Shroff, Dimple Kapadia in lead roles, along with Nana Patekar, Om Puri, Kader Khan, Kiran Kumar in supporting roles. The film was speculated to have been based on the life of Karim Lala.
Nuh Omar is a director and screenwriter, originally from Pakistan.
Kevin Loader is a British film and television producer. Since 1996, he and co-owner Roger Michell have run a London-based production company, Free Range Films, through which the pair have made several feature films directed by Michell, including The Mother, Enduring Love, Venus, Hyde Park on Hudson, and Le Week-end. Their most recent film is an adaptation by Michell of Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel. The company is also developing and producing film and television projects with other directors. Loader was awarded the Bafta for Best Television Serial in 2015 for The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.
Udayan Prasad is an Indian-born British television and film director. He is best known for his films Brothers in Trouble (1995) and My Son the Fanatic (1997), the latter based on a short story by Hanif Kureshi.
The Black Album is the second novel written by British author Hanif Kureishi. Published in 1995 by Faber and Faber, the novel was adapted for the stage in 2009 and explores Muslim fundamentalism, youth culture, sex, drugs, and alienation in a young British-Pakistani man's world that is being pulled in different directions by a modern lifestyle of London and traditional Muslim culture.
Deanna Kamiel was a Canadian-born director, documentary film/public TV writer/producer with a career in public broadcasting at the CBC in Toronto and PBS in Minneapolis and professor of film development at SUNY Purchase College and then at The New School, Manhattan, New York City, US. She worked for 26 years (1992–2018) as Head of The New School's Documentary Studies program, Director of Graduate Certificate in Doc Studies Program, and Assistant Professor of Media Studies - School of Media Studies, Manhattan, New York, U.S. Kamiel's documentaries were based on live interviews of the person(s) the film was about. As a student at The University of Toronto in the 1960s, she wrote for The Varsity in Toronto, and The Ubyssey in Vancouver.
Mohamed Akbar Kurtha is a British actor and producer, known for his role as Dr. Rana Mistry in the BBC soap opera Doctors (2000–2001). In a career spanning over thirty years, he has also appeared in various films including Bhaji on the Beach (1993), My Son the Fanatic (1997), Esther Kahn (2000) and Košnice (2012).