Tilda Swinton’s academic listens to Idris Elba’s Djinn recount his tragic life as a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire. Swinton plays a complex character. I wish the Turkish people in the Djinn’s stories were allowed the same humanity. We get a mix of bloodthirsty sultans, gullible concubines and monstrous hedonists. The stories allow Swinton’s character to reconsider what she truly wants in life. But they also reduce a lot of people to props.

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