Starring Archie Panjabi, Renu Setna, and Steve Jackson. Rating unavailable.

If there's anything worse than being a stranger in a strange land, it's being a stranger in your own land. This is something that Yasmin (Archie Panjabi, the non-soccer-playing sister from Bend It Like Beckham) learns the hard way in the wake of the September 11 bombings.

Prior to a terrifying raid conducted by Tony Blair's stormtroopers, Yasmin's biggest problems are finding places to change from Pakistani to western clothes without being observed by nosy neighbours, looking cool at the pub even though she doesn't consume alcohol, and hanging out with a white workmate (Steve Jackson) whom she more than half-fancies but can't quite see marrying. Then political paranoia strikes England, her brother switches allegiance from drug-dealing to radical Islam, her father becomes even more tormented by his in-between status, and Yasmin's friends and coworkers start looking at her in a new and decidedly less friendly way.

For director Kenneth Glenaan and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty), the road to terrorism is definitely not one-way. They show us how a seemingly warm and open fundamentalist proselytizer with suicide bombing on his mind can seem ever more attractive as the outside world turns uglier, regardless of his ultimate motives. In a similar vein, Yasmin's retreat toward tradition has more to do with being accepted by anybody on any terms than with reconnecting with her ancestral roots.

There's more than just political acuity in this movie. There's wisdom, too.