From taqwacore to taekwondo at Sundance

A film on American-born punk Muslims screens at a festival that also includes a film on a female taekwondo champion in Iran.

Like many films that would not have been at Sundance a decade ago, The Taqwacores is, among other things, a novelty - a dramatic film about a houseful of Muslim punks coming of age in America after September 11, 2001. And it's all set in Buffalo, one of those old industrial cities that produce little besides punks these days. It is a first feature by Eyad Zahra, a filmmaker born in the US to immigrant Syrian parents. Zahra formerly worked producing television promotion segments for Showtime Arabia in Dubai and in the US. He also worked for Salaam MTV, and has made several short films.

To say that the film strikes close to home would be an understatement. It was shot on a super-low budget in Zahra's hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Zahra stayed at his parents' home during the shoot. It is no coincidence that the film is one of 10 new features in Sundance's non-competitive category, Next, which is devoted to films at budgets under $500,000 (Dh1.8m). John Cooper, Sundance's programme director, described the section as a return to the festival's roots. For Islamic punk, it can't help but be a look forward. There's not much history to look back on.

The protagonist of The Taqwacores is shy Yusef (Bobby Naderi), an engineering student who moves out of his college dormitory after he finds a house in town that flies a star and crescent flag. The house is also covered with graffiti. The place is nothing if not diverse - one housemate, Jehangir (Dominic Rains), wears a spiky mohawk and has no interest in promoting a better image of Islamic youth in the US.

As he and Yusuf drive down a quiet street in a residential neighbourhood, Jehangir screams out the car window, mocking the fears that some Americans have when they see someone who appears to come from an Islamic country. "You make me nervous!" he shouts. Also in the house are the traditional Umar, the Shiite skinhead Amazing Ayyub, and Rabeya, who tosses out wisecracks like one of the guys. (She is played with lots of attitude by Noureen Dewulf, an Indian-American actress.)

The housemates initiate Yusef into taqwacore, a Muslim punk-rock scene. The film is an adaptation of the novel by Michael Muhammad Knight, an American convert to Islam at the age of 16. Knight's book is routinely described as the Muslim equivalent of JD Salinger's modern classic, Catcher in the Rye. Zahra calls it a book that could have been written just for him. "Private thoughts and feelings that troubled me for years were being discussed openly, honestly and unbarred," he said. "To hear these points debated in an Islamic setting was downright groundbreaking." Knight co-produced and co-wrote The Taqwacores.

"The Muslims say you're not really Muslims, the punks say you're not really punk," says the spiky-haired Jehangir. Over the course of The Taqwacores, the housemates lurch between the religion they practise and the American culture that draws them to rebellion, which in The Taqwacores takes the form of music. If the Islamic punk scene of The Taqwacores is unusual, so is a female taekwondo champion in Iran. Kick in Iran in Sundance's World Documentary Competition follows the martial artist Sara Koshjamal-Fekri, 20, the first Iranian woman to qualify for the Olympics, as she journeys from her gym in Tehran to competitive events at the Beijing Olympics.

The film peers into the largely unknown world of Iranian women's sport. Fighting in a hijab, Koshjamal-Fekri kicks and screeches with conviction. We'll probably be seeing more from both her and Zahra.