The Berlin film festival, which draws to a close on Saturday, made a piece of film history earlier this week when it screened its first all-Pakistani produced feature film.<\/p>\n
“Lali”, by director Sarmad Sultan Khoosat, had its world premiere on Thursday at a packed screening where it was warmly welcomed by members of Berlin’s own Pakistani community, which included the country’s ambassador to Germany.<\/p>\n
The Punjabi-language black comedy tells the story of Sajawal (Channan Hanif) and his new bride Zeba (Mamya Shajaffar).<\/p>\n
The locals in their working-class part of the city of Sahiwal mutter that Zeba is living under a curse after her previous suitors died in mysterious circumstances.<\/p>\n
Khoosat told AFP that making Pakistan’s debut at the festival came with “a good sense of achievement, but also with a sense of responsibility”.<\/p>\n
He said it was a “sign of validation” to achieve recognition with a story “deeply rooted in its own idiom”.<\/p>\n
Part of that idiom is the boisterous humour that the Punjab region is known for, portrayed in part through Sajawal’s mother, the imposing matriarch Sohni Ammi.<\/p>\n
The film opens with her encouraging the men of the neighbourhood to fire guns in celebration of Sajawal’s wedding — only for her to get shot in the leg.<\/p>\n
– ‘New generation’ of filmmakers –<\/p>\n
The mordant humour alternates with more serious themes like desire, sexuality and unhealed trauma and occasional suggestions of magic and the supernatural.<\/p>\n
Although Khoosat pointed out nothing that takes place on screen is physically impossible.<\/p>\n
“Lali”‘s premiere at Berlin has echoes of the trajectory of “Joyland” by Saim Sadiq, which became the first ever Pakistani entry in competition at the Cannes film festival in 2022.<\/p>\n
That film tells the story of a man falling for the trans director of a dance troupe and received critical acclaim as well the Jury Prize and the “Queer Palm” at Cannes.<\/p>\n
Khoosat was a producer on that film and Sadiq in turn worked as an editor on “Lali”.<\/p>\n
Is Khoosat hopeful that such films can raise the profile of Pakistani cinema?<\/p>\n
He said that the industry in Pakistan has been struggling, suffering a “semi-gradual kind of demise” over the past 20 years or so.<\/p>\n
“Before that, we had a big cinema scene… which would produce, you know, more than 100 films a year. “<\/p>\n
But Khoosat said Pakistani cinema has struggled to rise of other media and did not “cater to a newer audience”.<\/p>\n
Could films like “Lali” bring Pakistani cinema new recognition?<\/p>\n
“This opportunity of visibility on such platforms — I just wish that, you know, it would translate into a more thriving” domestic film industry, Khoosat said.<\/p>\n
“There’s definitely a whole new generation of filmmakers, and they need to be facilitated to produce more work.”<\/p>\n
jsk\/giv<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berlin film festival, which draws to a close on Saturday, made a piece of film history earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,761,7125,190,10822,14095,14093,14092,14094,14091,12257],"class_list":{"0":"post-20353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-berlinale","10":"tag-cannes-film-festival","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-john-macdougall","13":"tag-lali","14":"tag-pakistani-cinema","15":"tag-pakistani-community","16":"tag-sajawal-channan-hanif","17":"tag-sarmad-sultan-khoosat","18":"tag-world-premiere"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}