The Malaysian director, producer and writer Yasmin Ahmad has died. She suffered a stroke on July 23, according to local media, and died of a brain hemorrhage two days later. She was 51.
After starting her career as a copywriter at advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, Yasmin Ahmad turned to film, releasing her first feature-length movie, Rabun, in 2002. She released a new movie nearly every year after that, the most recent being Talentime, first screened in Malaysia in March 2009.
Many of Yasmin Ahmad’s movies garnered international acclaim, picking up numerous awards at festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival and the Tokyo International Film Festival. At home, however, she was a controversial figure, mostly due to her depictions of inter-racial romances in a country where the main ethnic groups remain fiercely divided. 2004’s Sepet, for example, tells the story of a young Malay girl who falls in love with a Chinese boy.
Tributes have been flooding into publications such as The New Straits Times since the director’s death, a testament to her profile in her homeland, if not her popularity.
