Sharifah Amani

Start with Yasmin Ahmad's Sepet (2004), where Amani plays Orked, a Malay schoolgirl whose romance with a Chinese boy confronts the assumptions around them. Her directness and quick shifts of feeling make the relationship accessible without smoothing away its particular Malaysian setting. The collaboration with Ahmad is the career thread to follow: Amani's warmth can make a social argument feel like an encounter with an individual person.