تازہ ترین

Pakistani dramas have long been a mirror to the society they come from, and Aik Mohabbat Aur is doing exactly that. The ongoing drama, in which Qudsia Ali plays Maham and Abbas Ashraf Awan plays Faris, explores the painful reality of marriages where women find themselves trapped with narcissistic partners. In a candid conversation with Fuchsia Magazine, the two actors stepped out of their fictional roles and spoke plainly about the dynamics they believe are damaging real relationships in Pakistan today. Abbas Ashraf was direct about where he believes the problem begins, and it is not with men themselves but with how they are raised. He said the narcissistic complex in men is a product of parenting, specifically the way sons are conditioned from childhood to feel superior to everyone around them. Parents, he argued, tell their sons they are the inheritors, the ones who matter, the ones who carry the family forward, while daughters are quietly assigned a lesser place. That imbalance, repeated across generations, plants the seeds of the entitlement and control that later destroys marriages. His prescription was as straightforward as his diagnosis. “Make both your sons and daughters feel equal if you want to stop your sons from becoming negative narcissists,” he said. It is a simple idea that carries enormous weight precisely because of how rarely it is practised. Qudsia Ali brought a different but equally sharp perspective to the same conversation, turning her focus toward the women who stay in difficult marriages long past the point of reason. Her explanation was rooted not in weakness but in a specific emotional wound. She said that many women are deprived of parental love from the very beginning of their lives. When they finally encounter even a fragment of affection from a partner, however temporary or conditional it may be, they hold on to it with everything they have because they have never known anything different. “Women are deprived of parental love and when they get even a glimpse of love, they lie down and take everything,” she said. “They take even a temporary love as they are extremely insecure.” The image is striking and uncomfortably accurate for anyone who has watched a woman accept treatment that from the outside looks impossible to justify. Qudsia did not offer this observation from a distance. She acknowledged that she herself had carried insecurities of her own, and that she had done the work to understand and overcome them. It was a moment of personal honesty that gave her words additional weight. Together, their observations form a connected picture of how the same system of unequal parenting produces both the men who expect everything and the women who accept anything. The drama they are appearing in explores exactly this territory on screen. But in this conversation, they chose to name it plainly off screen too, and that directness is what has made their remarks resonate beyond the usual boundaries of a promotional interview.

The release of Bullah, a Pakistani film written by veteran screenwriter Nasir Adeeb and starring Shaan Shahid and Saleem Shah, has been placed in uncertainty after a Senate standing committee recommended that its screening be halted until its title is changed and certain dialogues are revised. The recommendation emerged from a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting held on Thursday, July 24, chaired by Senator Sarmad Ali. The session was convened to review concerns that had been raised about the film’s certification process by the Central Board of Film Censors. Officials from the CBFC appeared before the committee to defend the approval process, telling members that Bullah had already been cleared without any cuts by both the Punjab and Sindh censor boards under the same title. They explained that the federal board’s jurisdiction was limited to Islamabad Capital Territory and cantonment areas, and maintained that the CBFC chairman could not unilaterally reject a film. Certification decisions, they clarified, were taken collectively by the board, with the chairman holding only a casting vote in the event of a tie. The officials further noted that if the committee believed the film should be banned or its title changed, the matter could be referred to the federal government, which serves as the next appellate authority under the applicable legal framework. Senator Pervaiz Rashid pushed back on the board’s defence, questioning whether Nasir Adeeb’s reputation as a screenwriter was a sufficient basis for approving the film’s content. He pointed out that Adeeb was primarily known for writing violence-based films, particularly Maula Jatt, and argued that this background did not establish the screenwriter’s credentials as an authority on history, national personalities or Pakistan’s cultural traditions. Senator Rashid also remarked that Maula Jatt had introduced the “gandasa” as a cultural symbol to mainstream audiences, saying he had not been aware of the weapon before the film popularised it. Following the discussion, committee chairman Senator Sarmad Ali concluded the session by proposing that the film’s title be changed and that certain dialogues be revised before it is permitted to screen. He further suggested that Bullah remain suspended until these recommended changes have been implemented. The meeting was attended by Senators Abdul Shakoor Khan, Syed Waqar Mehdi, Pervaiz Rashid and Jan Mohammad, along with Secretary Information Ashfaq Ahmed Khalil and officials from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Central Board of Film Censors. The film’s makers have not publicly responded to the committee’s recommendations. With both provincial censor boards having already cleared the film without cuts, the situation now rests on what the federal government decides to do with the parliamentary committee’s proposal.

Pakistan’s presence on the international film festival circuit has grown significantly in recent years, and the latest milestone arrives in the form of a debut documentary that will carry the spirit of Sehwan to one of Europe’s most prestigious stages. Filmmaker Umair Bilal’s debut feature documentary As Light as Air has been selected for the 79th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where it will have its world premiere in August. The selection places Pakistani independent cinema on a platform that celebrates outstanding documentary filmmaking from around the world, and represents another meaningful step in the growing global recognition of Pakistan’s independent film movement. The film is set in Sehwan, the historic Sufi town in Sindh that is home to the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, one of Pakistan’s most revered spiritual sites. The documentary explores the lives of the pilgrims, wanderers and spiritual seekers who travel to Sehwan carrying grief, longing and hope, drawn by the promise of solace that the shrine and its rituals have offered for centuries. At the centre of the film is the practice of dhamaal, the devotional dance performed at the shrine, which Bilal has described as the heartbeat of Sehwan. Through the rhythm of the music, the movement of the devotees and the atmosphere of collective faith, the documentary offers an intimate and immersive portrait of a spiritual world that few outside Pakistan have encountered directly. As Light as Air has been selected for the Semaine de la Critique section of the Locarno festival, a dedicated showcase for outstanding documentary filmmaking that consistently attracts significant attention from international distributors and critics. The 79th Locarno Film Festival runs from August 5 to 15 and will present 103 world premieres this year across its various sections, including international competition, the Piazza Grande outdoor screenings and documentary showcases. The programme features new work by internationally acclaimed filmmakers including Hong Sangsoo, Denis Cote and Maria Back. The festival will also honour celebrated American director James Gray with its Career Leopard award, one of the most prestigious recognitions the festival offers to filmmakers who have made an enduring contribution to cinema. Festival organisers have described this year’s edition as reflecting a world shaped by conflict while celebrating the enduring power of cinema to connect audiences across cultures and borders. Against that backdrop, a documentary rooted in Pakistan’s Sufi traditions and set in one of the country’s most spiritually significant towns offers something genuinely distinctive, a window into a world of devotion, music and collective belonging that carries a universality capable of reaching audiences with no prior connection to its cultural context. For Umair Bilal, the Locarno selection is a remarkable achievement for a debut feature, and for Pakistani cinema more broadly it signals that stories told with authenticity and artistic conviction about the country’s own cultural heritage can find a home on the world stage.

Ali Fazal is at a point in his career where the choices he makes carry a different kind of weight, and he is no longer making them for the reasons he once did. In a candid conversation with Elle India, the actor opened up about the creative philosophy guiding his work now, a deliberate shift away from commercial instincts and toward projects that leave a genuine mark. He described what worries him most as a performer with characteristic directness. “Mostly the feeling that you’ve made less of a difference in people’s lives,” he said. It is the kind of answer that says everything about how far his priorities have moved from where they began. Fazal said he now gravitates toward roles that have “less relevance and more resonance”, a distinction that defines much of his current thinking about both his Bollywood and Hollywood career. He wants the work to reflect the ambition and humanity that define him as a person, not simply as an actor building a brand. His upcoming film Raakh, a crime thriller in which he plays a police officer investigating a case rooted in real historical events from 1970s Delhi, served as the central example in his conversation. “Sometimes you’re part of things that work, and that’s wonderful because we all need appreciation to move forward,” he said. “But once in a while, there are projects that actually begin conversations. They come at a time when society perhaps needs them or needs reminding that, sadly, not much has changed fifty years later. That’s what Raakh has done. It has humbled me.” He was equally candid about how his decision-making process has changed. “Earlier, I’d jump into whatever came my way because I had to. Today, I can afford patience.” That patience is now applied most rigorously to the screenplay itself, which he described as the first and most important filter. “The punctuation in a screenplay tells you whether it’s going to be good or bad,” he said, adding with a self-aware joke: “I’m not some A-list star who’s staying away from genres because they’ll spoil my image. I’ve probably stayed away from bad scripts more than genres.” His early career also featured in the conversation. He credited Always Kabhi Kabhi, a film that performed modestly at the box office, with teaching him the grammar of cinema. The film introduced him to Shah Rukh Khan, who produced it, and whom Fazal described as “one of the best artists we have.” On Mirzapur: The Film, which brings the streaming universe to theatres, Fazal called it “a giant experiment,” and on his character Guddu Pandit, he said what has stayed with him is not the violence but the innocence beneath it. Away from acting, he and his wife Richa Chadha are building Pushing Buttons Studios, their independent production company aimed at supporting original storytelling. Asked to describe his journey in a single word, Fazal chose “relentless.” It is the right word for a career that is now defined not by the roles he has taken but by the ones he has chosen to wait for.

Javed Akhtar has been writing words that endure for more than five decades, and in a candid conversation with Vogue India, he turned his gaze toward what he believes is happening to creativity in the digital age. What he found does not reassure him. The veteran lyricist and screenwriter argued that the internet and its algorithms have created a culture of creative fear, one in which people are no longer willing to take the risk of doing something that has not already been done before. “The echo chambers created by the internet have made most people afraid to do something for the first time,” he said. “Once someone else does it, they’re fine to follow in their footsteps.” He extended that observation into a broader concern about how people engage with ideas and the world around them. “People no longer want to pause, think, analyse or sit with an idea. They are living happily, so why would they bother to think about this universe or the vastness of nature? For them, it is a waste of time.” For Akhtar, this impatience is incompatible with the kind of work that lasts. “Meaningful creation requires time, discomfort and reflection,” he said, adding that his own willingness to question dominant voices and widely accepted ideologies has always come from exactly that kind of sustained engagement with ideas. He was particularly pointed about the music industry and the way commercial priorities have pushed the role of lyrics to the margins. “Today, words have become less important because the marketing team has decided that slow music won’t trend,” he said. The result, in his view, is an industry that remixes old material with inferior new writing rather than producing something genuinely fresh. “But then they take those same songs, edit the mukhras and remix them with some inferiorly written antaras. There was a time when writers had more space. Today, other forces dictate what music gets made. And yet, songs that are decades old still endure, while many recent ones have a short shelf life.” His advice to young writers was direct and unglamorous. Read more. Not only classical literature and celebrated authors, but light reading too. “The real loss is not in reading something trivial but in not reading at all,” he said. On the creative process itself, Akhtar drew a distinction that cuts to the heart of what separates craft from genuine art. “All arts can be divided into two parts. On one hand, there’s imagination, passion, fantasy and romance, and on the other, there is craft. You can learn the craft in a crash course. But imagining, fantasising and romanticising cannot be learned. There are no courses for yearning.” He closed with a lesson passed down from his father that has stayed with him throughout his career. “It is very easy to write in difficult language, but very difficult to write in easy language. When you write simply, there is no space for your idea to hide behind big words. Only if you are totally convinced of what you are writing can you afford to use transparent language.” It is a principle that has shaped some of Hindi cinema’s most enduring words, and one that no algorithm is likely to teach.