Choice of Love

Distributed by Frameline, 145 Ninth St., Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94103; 415-703-8650Produced by Høgskolen i LillehammerDirected by Eirik Andreas Sandakar2009, DVD, color, 35 min. A slight but well-crafted documentary, The Choice of Love follows a young, native Norwegian filmmaker (Sandakar) as he investigates life in the Norwegian gay Muslim community. Explaining that he “feels free,” Sandakar attempts to discover both the limits of this freedom as well as its price, as reflected in the experiences of gay Muslim refugees to his homeland. The film interviews and examines Kaltham, the first openly gay Muslim in Norway; “Sayhed,” a Somali Muslim refugee; as well as Basim Ghozlan, the head of the Islamic Union in Oslo. All of these subjects has a good deal to say about their own freedom (or lack thereof), and each person’s stories colors the others, allowing them to elaborate themselves in context. For example, Kaltham, who fled Saudi Arabia and Iraq under death threats from his own father, still finds happiness within himself and, tellingly, “safety” with his dog. Such feelings of “freedom,” then impact Sayhed’s story—Sayhed, who similarly fled his homeland after having been imprisoned for his sexual orientation and (grimly ironically) raped by male guards who infected him with HIV. Ghozlan provides something of a counter-point, attempting to produce a religious formula on love versus sin: “Love is, of course, a gift from God; but sex out of marriage is forbidden….” Indeed, North American as well as many other audiences will immediately find parallels to the narrative. Sayhed was tortured and left to die exactly as Matthew Shepard had been in the United States—and for the same reason. Ghozlan’s simultaneously pro- and anti-gay sentiments are identical to those of many more “mainstream/liberal” churches and individuals. What self-struggling gay American youth does not hear (and internalize) thoughts like, A gay person cannot be an imam (or priest or whatever) but is fine as a hairdresser (!)…? Or, more confusing, perhaps: God makes people one-half gay, but wants us to make our own choices? Toward the end of the film, The Choice of Love explores the Norwegian “Open Churchgroup,” with its positive gay rights message, as well as an admittedly gay pastor who councils Kaltham. Otherwise throughout there are self-recriminations and angry words in a coffee shop—the latter eliciting a surprised “Here, in Norway, in 2008!” from the filmmaker—nothing at all foreign to any audience even vaguely aware of contemporary gay issues. A brief but revealing taste of the pro- and the anti-, as it were. And this “easy immediacy” makes The Choice of Love most accessible to all audiences. Though the film focuses on three individuals, the message is clear and the parallels obvious. Liberal Norway (“in 2008!”) faces the same issues of most of the more developed world—a debate over basic rights for the gay community. Where the film is not strong is in its examination of the Islamic world within a larger non-Muslim state. This is, honestly, less of a criticism that it might be; but while the film promises to identify this problem, it does not really answer what it means to be a gay Muslim refugee transmitted to a Muslim enclave in another, more socially liberal, country. In such a way, the filmmaker does not (could not, surely) answer his own question: What are the costs of freedom, and what does it mean to “feel free”? Again, these are somewhat small, thesis-oriented criticisms; and the film is excellent in translating overall cultural issues on homosexuality—if not, notably, individuals’ stories therein. A greater concern is a technical one: spoken largely in Norwegian, the film is subtitled pretty badly. There are numerous spelling errors in the captioned text and confusion in some of the statements. At a gay marriage celebration, one protester pickets with a sign translated as “New marital laws will create many conflicts!” Perhaps this is a correct rendering (if awfully mild sounding!), but other significant instances arise. For example, Sayhed says that he is “often afraid of his own life”—but the context seems to want to say “for” his own life. Either way, it is heart-wrenching, but it is unclear; and the two connote different problems with his being a gay Muslim. Overall though, The Choice of Love is a fine look at personal struggles with homosexuality, especially in contrast to one’s overall culture or religion. More might have been made of the primary subjects’ individual stories and of Muslim communities’ reactions to homosexuality, and thus the film is not necessarily recommended for geographical area or religious studies. It is, though, overall recommended for collections of and focused on gay and lesbian as well as gender studies.