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Pakistani rapper Talha Anjum has once again highlighted the plight of Pakistani sailors reportedly being held hostage by Somali pirates, saying that the issue has been forgotten by both the media and the public. In an Instagram story shared on Thursday, Anjum criticised the authorities’ response and said the government had failed to protect Pakistani citizens, whether inside the country or abroad. He expressed concern that the families of the affected sailors were still waiting for answers and support. “The media forgot about these families and sadly, so did the people of Pakistan,” Anjum said while calling for urgent action to secure the release of the hostages. The ship was reportedly hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia in April, sparking concern and calls for efforts to bring the Pakistani sailors home. Anjum had previously raised his voice on the issue, saying he personally knew one of the crew members and considered him like a brother. At the time, the rapper criticised what he described as a lack of seriousness from authorities and urged officials to take immediate steps for the safe return of the stranded sailors. . Several other Pakistani celebrities, including Mahira Khan, Sabeena Farooq, and Bushra Ansari, have also spoken publicly in support of the affected sailors and their families. The families of the crew members continue to await further developments as calls grow for renewed efforts to secure their safe release.

If you have watched Pakistani dramas with any regularity, you have almost certainly seen Abu Rohan, even if you did not know his name. The senior actor has become one of the most recognisable faces in the industry, not for playing a hero or a villain, but for the very specific and endlessly repeated role of the Nikah Khuwan, the marriage officiant who presides over the wedding ceremonies that are a staple of Pakistani television storytelling. His face has appeared in nikah scenes across some of the most watched dramas in recent years, including Tere Bin, Siyani, Sunn Mere Dil and Yunhi. For many viewers, his presence on screen has become a kind of shorthand for the moment a drama is about to reach its emotional peak. In a recent interview with BBC Urdu, Abu Rohan finally spoke at length about how this unusual acting career began, and the story is as unexpected as the career itself. It started not in a drama studio but in a jewellery shop. Abu Rohan is, by profession, a successful jeweller based in Karachi. Around 35 years ago, a television channel invited him onto a morning show not to act but to answer viewer questions about gold. He explained what happened next in his own words. “Around 35 years ago, a television channel invited me as a jeweler. The owners wanted me to appear on a show where I would answer viewers’ questions about gold. When I appeared on the morning show, I caught the attention of drama makers. They felt I was comfortable in front of the camera, and that’s how I started acting in television dramas.” What followed was a career that spans decades and more productions than most full-time actors manage. “So far, I have solemnized Nikah in around 80 to 85 dramas,” he said. He also revealed that part of his career unfolded outside Pakistan. “I also lived in Bahrain for nearly eight years, where I took part in dramas.” On the nature of the role itself, he offered an insight that many viewers may not have considered. While the nikah khuwan is often a static presence on screen, drama does not always let him remain so. “There are scenes where fights break out during the Nikah, and I have to give different expressions. Usually, it’s a static character, but sometimes it requires proper acting. Directors and producers also cast me in other roles.” His fame among audiences has also brought some unusual requests, which he handles with thoughtful care. “Many people have invited me to officiate Nikah at their real-life weddings, but I politely refused because Nikah is a matter of religion. However, after the Nikah ceremony, I sometimes offer prayers for the couple’s happiness.” For a man who came to television to talk about gold, Abu Rohan has ended up leaving a very different kind of impression, one measured not in carats but in the countless wedding scenes that have made him one of Pakistani drama’s most quietly beloved presences.

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.