Director : Parvez Sharma

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Distributor: First Run Features

Film Summary
In a time when Islam is under tremendous attack from within and without, A Jihad for Love is a daring documentary filmed in twelve countries and nine languages. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma has gone where the silence is loudest, filming with great risk in nations where government permission to make this film was not an option.

A Jihad for Love is the world's first feature documentary to explore the complex global intersections between Islam and homosexuality. Parvez enters the many worlds of Islam by illuminating multiple stories as diverse as Islam itself. The film travels a wide geographic arc presenting us lives from India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa and France. Always filming in secret and as a Muslim, Parvez makes the film from within the faith, depicting Islam with the same respect that the film's characters show for it.

"A Jihad for Love is a dispatch from the outer limits of marginalization: a documentary on devout Muslims struggling with their homosexuality." (Nathan Lee, New York Times)

"Parvez Sharma’s brave documentary about homosexuality in the Muslim world presents a brutally honest, eye-opening look at gay and lesbian individuals who continue to practice their religion, despite its blunt, often violent rejection of their orientation." (Sara Cardace, New York Magazine)