In My Father's House

This elegantly shot, brave and impassioned documentary deals with the director's own family experiences. She tells her own story, how she stayed single and childless since leaving home, refusing arranged marriages. She also interviews her grandmother - 'a deflowered in yesterday's couscous' - and other family members, including her father, who repudiated her mother when she died young to take another 17-year-old wife. Alongside these personal episodes, to show continuity, the director adds film of a young Dutch Muslim woman embarking on an arranged marriage in Morocco and presents interviews with gynaecologists charged with providing evidence of a woman's virginity before a marriage is allowed (one tells of how stinging nettles are used the night before to provide the bloodied sheets required by tradition).