Mr. Yusuf

Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.

Arguing for communal harmony and filial piety, the film tells of Madhumal (Dave), a rich zamindar, his beloved son Shashibhushan (Yusuf), his loving daughter Ammapurna (Mani) and his adopted son Madhav (Chichenkar). When Madhumal picks up a wounded child swathed in bandages, a title says 'nay, Hindus and Mohammedans are but the children of one loving father, God'. In close up, Madhumal is shown donating equally to the Aligarh Muslim and Benares Hindu universities. In contrast, his dissolute son Shashibhushan falls into the clutches of the villain Gadbaddas and the courtesan Nurjeha