A Sinner in Mecca A Sinner in Mecca A Sinner in Mecca is a 2015 documentary film from director Parvez Sharma ("A Jihad for Love"). The film chronicles Sharma's Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia as an openly gay Muslim. The film premiered at the 2015 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to critical acclaim as well as negative controversies. The film opened in theaters in the US on September 4, 2015 and is a New York Times Critics' Pick. "A Sinner in Mecca" enters a world that has been forbidden to non-Muslims for 14 centuries. Sharma documents his journey on an iPhone and
Mecca failures of crowd control because of the large numbers of people who come to make the Hajj. For example, on 2 July 1990, a pilgrimage to Mecca ended in tragedy when the ventilation system failed in a crowded pedestrian tunnel and 1,426 people were either suffocated or trampled to death in a stampede. On 24 September 2015, 700 pilgrims were killed in a stampede at Mina during the stoning-the-Devil ritual at Jamarat. Mecca is at an elevation of above sea level, and approximately inland from the Red Sea. Central Mecca lies in a corridor between mountains, which is often called