''Ali's Wedding'' is a 2017

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

romantic comedy Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...

feature film from

Matchbox Pictures Matchbox Pictures is a film and television production company headquartered in Sydney with production houses in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore. It was formed in 2008 by Tony Ayres, Penny Chapman, Helen Bowden, Michael McMahon and Helen Panckhu ...

. It is directed by Jeffrey Walker and written by

Osamah Sami Osamah Sami (born 10 March 1983 in Qom, Iran) is an Australian stage and screen actor, writer, spoken-word artist, and stand-up comedian of Iraqi origin. His critically acclaimed book ''Good Muslim Boy'', was the winner of the 2016 NSW Premie ...

and stars Sami, Helana Sawires,

Don Hany Don Hany (born 18 September 1975) is an Australian actor. He is best known for his role in the series ''White Collar Blue'', Dr. Chris Havel in ''Offspring'', and the leading role of Zane Malik in the SBS series '' East West 101''. He is also ...

and Ryan Corr. Sami has been quoted as saying that the film is "history making, the first Muslim rom-com. This movie will hopefully pave the way for many other similar stories, not just from the Muslim community but from other communities and other minorities in our society." He said that the "affectionate and poignant story of love" was trying to cast a more positive light on Muslim-Australian life.

Plot

Ali (

), the charming and musically-talented son of an Iraqi Shia cleric (

), struggles to make the right life choices despite the best of intentions. He wants to be with the girl, Dianne ( Helana Sawires), he loves, but he's been promised to another girl at his father's mosque. He wants to be the great doctor that the community expects him to be, but he doesn't get the marks. Above all, he wants to make his father proud. To live up to these impossible expectations, he lies about his academic achievements, and then his quest to please his father spirals out of control, with amusing and poignant consequences.

Cast

as Ali Albasri *

as Sheik Mahdi * Helana Sawires as Dianne Mohsen * Frances Duca as Zahra *Khaled Khalafalla as Moe Greene *Asal Shenavehzadeh as Ramona *Majid Shokor as Seyyed Ghaffar *Shayan Salehian as Luay *Ghazi Alkinani as Abu Faisal *Rodney Afif as Haj Karim *Maha Wilson as Yomna *Natalie Gamsu as Fatima *

Robert Rabiah Robert Rabiah is an Australian film actor best known for his roles as Hakim in ''Face to Face (2011 film), Face to Face'' for which he was nominated for a AACTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Film and Best Actor at the Inside Film Awards ...

as Mohsen *

Rahel Romahn Rahel Romahn (born ) is a Kurdish-Iraqi born Australian actor. For his performance in '' The Principal'' he was nominated for the 2016 AACTA Award for Best Guest or Supporting Actor in a Television Drama and the 2016 Logie Award for Most Outst ...

as Ayoob *

Aljin Abella Aljin Abella (born 27 July 1985), also known as Alin Abella, is an Australian actor of Filipino descent, who is best known for playing Theo Martin, the Blue Ranger, on ''Power Rangers Jungle Fury'', in all 32 episodes of the show, which aired in ...

as Chris * Ryan Corr as Wazza *Jaafar Allamy as Jamal Al Hilfi

Release

''Ali's Wedding'' premiered at the

Adelaide Film Festival The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF, formerly ADLFF) is film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October ...

in October 2016. It also showed at the

Sydney Film Festival The Sydney Film Festival is an annual competitive film festival held in Sydney, Australia, usually over 12 days in June. A number of awards are given, the top one being the Sydney Film Prize. the festival's director is Nashen Moodley. Histo ...

on 8 June 2017.

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "''Ali's Wedding'' uses its very specific setting to explore universal ideas about relationships -- and in delightfully smart, funny fashion." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Music

* see

Ali's Wedding (soundtrack) ''Ali's Wedding (soundtrack)'' is the original motion picture soundtrack for the 2017 Australian romantic comedy Ali's Wedding, of the same name starring Osamah Sami and Don Hany. The soundtrack is credited to Nigel Westlake, Sydney Symphony Orc ...

Accolades

References

External links

''Ali's Wedding'' official website
* {{IMDb title, 2782692 2016 films Australian romantic comedy-drama films Films set in Melbourne Films shot in Melbourne Films based on biographies Films based on works by Australian writers Islamic comedy and humor Films scored by Nigel Westlake 2016 romantic comedy-drama films 2016 comedy films 2016 drama films 2010s English-language films