The final season of the show, which debuted in 2004, has had a 161-episode run over its eight seasons so far. The final series will begin streaming on JioHotstar from October 14.

The show hosted some of India’s biggest stars across Bollywood and sports, with Johar asking them questions about friendships, romances, marriages and whatever else goes on in their world.

The conversations that followed had a knack for going viral — sometimes for the wrong reasons.

“Koffee With Karan has been such a large part of my identity in the entertainment industry… I still can’t believe it’s been 22 years and now this will be my ninth season,” Variety quoted Johar saying.

He said he had a rewarding experience hosting the show, but the time had come to focus on other pursuits. “I want to spend the next decade of my life directing more movies… telling many more stories… so with a heavy heart I am making this season my last,” the director said.

The show started off very strong with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol as guests on the inaugural episode. The first season also saw Amitabh Bachchan, his son Abhishek, Aishwarya Rai and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali sit on the show’s Koffee Kouch.

It was that same star power that propelled its future seasons, with Kajol and Kareena Kapoor being two of the most frequent guests.

Naturally, the show had its share of controversies too, with one episode in 2019 being taken off the Hotstar streaming platform after cricketer Hardik Pandya made derogatory remarks about women.

Both Pandiya and KL Rahul — who was also on the Kouch that day — were briefly suspended from the national team over the incident.

In 2022, the host convinced fans the show was ending with a post that said it would “not be returning”. He clarified hours later that it was no longer going to air on TV and would now stream on Hotstar.

However, it seems this next season will be his last hurrah, with Johar saying, “This will be the last time I will be on a couch that has been synonymous with conversations, candour and well… controversies… The decision is emotional and personal to me… But I am hoping the legacy of love the show has given me continues to brew in people’s hearts.”

Speaking at the launch of Rabia Anum’s new salon in Karachi, Ansari said she had been busy with engagements abroad but was now back in Pakistan and looking forward to working on three projects: two drama serials and a film.

The actor said she was due to start shooting for “Fahad [Mustafa]’s film” in December. She also said that while the cast has not been finalised, she knows that comedian Sohail Ahmed — better known by his stage name Azizi — will be part of the project.

“The serials,” she said, “one will start shooting in October, the other in November. I will be staying here now.”

The actor confirmed these would be her first projects after she starred in the drama Shaidai earlier this year.

When asked about her vocal positions on social issues and whether she gets trolled over the internet for them, Ansari said, “Actually, I think I speak about relevant things mostly, the mishappenings [in society].”

She recalled speaking out about the Mir Raza and Mustafa Amir cases, saying, “When these things get suffocating, I say something and I don’t think I say anything that would hurt somebody… I don’t get trolled.”

The actor condemned the way fashion designer Parishae Adnan was treated on a TV show hosted by Nadia Khan last week. She said, “It wasn’t right, the girl is very talented, the focus should have been on her achievement.”

Adnan, who recently closed a show held during New York Fashion Week with her Second Skin collection, was grilled by the host over the clothes she wears to the gym and how her parents were okay with her choices.

Ansari said the designer was “unique” in her work and in her style, and that was her personal matter. The actor said Khan was like a daughter to her and she can say these things to her whenever they see each other.

Ansari said Khan was trolled on the internet for the show, “which should be limited”. She said people sometimes say things in the flow of conversation and there had to be a limit to what trolls can do.

Another bone she had to pick was with online ‘critics’. “Everyone has become a critic, whether they know dramas or not, whether they are from the field or not, anyone with two mics can start a podcast and he criticises everyone.

“Anyone can say anything about anybody,” she said.

The star was speaking to The Express Tribune about her latest film, Sheroes, when she said the notion of cinemagoers supporting Pakistani films just because they’re from Pakistan was “quite old” and that “people want entertainment”.

Abbas said people go to theatres if they’re done with other activities like eating out, and want to be entertained, so the responsibility falls on filmmakers to prove themselves and make films to scratch that itch.

The actor said there were films that had succeeded in capturing their audiences, like Spider-Man, which had people dress up and show up to theatres every time a new film was released.

“It’s because Spider-Man has created a niche, Spider-Man has a very big franchise with Marvel,” the star said, adding that Pakistan needed to create franchises like that for its audiences.

Abbas said Pakistani filmmakers also need to instil confidence in their audiences that whatever they are paying to watch will be worth the Rs1,500 to Rs2,000 they are charged per seat.

“Look, not every Spider-Man movie has been great, all of them have flaws, but [people] know that the films have Tom Holland and Zendaya and they will get the kick they want from the movie.”

Coming to her own film, the actor said, “We can only ask you to give it a try. I am only going to tell you, ‘Come, look at it, have a watch.’”

She said her team was trying out new things and the film had been made by new directors — one of whom is making his debut feature for a cinema audience.

Sheroes is an anthology film with three stories of three separate women, each in an entirely different situation.

Abbas is the lead actor in the action-packed segment ‘Gear Up’ where she plays a police officer specialising in bomb disposal. The other two segments, ‘Artist’ and ‘Punch’ are led by Kinza Hashmi and Ushna Shah respectively.

Member of the Punjab Assembly Hina Parvez also joined in the conversation on Saturday, using the drama to highlight the importance of honest conversations between couples.

In an Instagram video, Butt, who is also the chairperson of the Punjab Women Protection Authority, urged married couples to communicate with each other. She shared her views after playing the infamous break-up scene from Dar-e-Nijaat, in which the antagonist, Zamil (Nameer Khan) tells his long-time girlfriend Zaryab (Durefishan Saleem) he can’t marry her because she isn’t a good enough Muslim wife for him.

“After marriage, there may be things from the past, an old relationship, or something personal that you would prefer to keep private. But if such a secret comes to light, it can have an impact on your relationship,” Butt said, before cautioning against anger, as it rarely solves a tense situation.

“Husband and wife should talk openly with each other. Instead of hiding things or lying, try to address the matter together. If there is a misunderstanding, resolve it through honest communication,” she added.

Butt also highlighted the importance of respect and trust in a marriage and advised couples not to ‘taunt’ each other by bringing up any past relationships or mistakes.

“Leave the past in the past. Work towards making your present better,” she said in the video.

It’s refreshing to see a government official use a television drama to talk about a broader social topic.

In Pakistan, getting into a relationship before marriage, covertly or overtly, is still considered — to a great extent — socially unacceptable. In fact, there is a significant part of the country’s population that looks down upon even engaged couples seeing each other before marriage.

As a result, more often than not, people are either unable or unwilling to openly talk about past relationships with their spouse. Due to the patriarchal nature of Pakistani society, this lack of communication is more common among women, who are expected to conform to a certain stringent standard of purity.

Consequently, more women also suffer harsher consequences for having, as Butt phrased it in her video, a ‘past’. This is exactly what Dar-e-Nijaat is attempting to highlight through its plot.

Pakistani dramas lately have helped spark important social debates and the fact that their messages are being used by lawmakers to spread awareness regarding key social issues is certainly commendable.

In a post on his Instagram account, the actor said the show “was not merely a drama” for him, but represented “a defining journey in my career, a chapter that challenged me, inspired me and ultimately became a new beginning”.

He thanked producers Momina Duraid and Nina Kashif first for helping bring such a story to TV screens. “Our society needs stories that make us reflect and look within,” Khan said.

He appreciated Kashif in particular as a friend and thanked her for trusting him with the show’s lead character.

Next came director Saife Hasan, whom the actor called “an asset, not just to the project, but to everyone fortunate enough to work alongside you”.

The longest tribute was naturally reserved for Khan’s co-lead Urwa Hocane. “I could not have done what I did without you beside me. Your presence as my co-actor brought out the best in me and allowed Tabish to truly shine,” he said.

The actor called Urwa “supremely talented, an exceptional actor, a beautiful human being and a truly cherished friend”.

Their co-star Sania Saeed got a more light-hearted ode from Khan for “finally becoming my mother on screen instead of my heroine”.

He commended the other actors on the show for their work, “brilliant, effortless and extraordinary as ever” and said a “heartfelt thank you to my entire crew: every technician, spot boy, helper and every member working tirelessly behind the scenes,” calling them the backbone of every performance.

Lastly, the actor thanked the writer of Aap Ki Izzat, Umera Ahmed, for penning such a meaningful script. “Your words gave this story its soul and its truth,” he said.

While last weekend marked the end of the saga of Tabish and Beena, Khan’s fans need not worry because the programme replacing Aap Ki Izzat on HUM TV is none other than his classic pre-Partition period-piece Aangan, which will be airing again after its successful 2018 run.

The show — which is directed by Mohammed Ehteshamuddin and based on a 1962 novel by Khadija Mastoor — stars Urwa’s sister Mawra, Ahad Raza Mir, Sajal Ali and Sonya Hussyn alongside Khan.

In a letter posted to its website on Thursday, the IDA condemned the Israeli government’s “public campaign of intimidation” against Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, both Israeli, who have been accused of treason.

The move comes almost a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would seek legislation to revoke the citizenship of anyone who ‘slanders’ or ‘defames’ Israeli soldiers or the state.

“Since NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, senior Israeli officials have moved against its directors. The culture minister has accused them of treason and sought to revoke their citizenship. The prime minister has announced bills to revoke the citizenship of anyone who ‘slanders IDF soldiers’ and to raise defamation damages twentyfold,” the letter read.

It noted that this rhetoric has led to wider public backlash against the filmmakers. They have been labelled ‘traitors’ in graffiti, while people have protested outside the home of Szor’s parents.

The IDA stressed that holding a different view of a film should never put its creators at risk.

The letter continues: “The Israeli military disputes the film’s account, and it is entitled to do so. But as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Israel is bound by Article 19, under which restrictions on expression must be provided by law and be necessary and proportionate to a legitimate aim. Revoking citizenship, imposing punitive damages, or opening security investigations in response to a documentary does not meet that test.”

The IDA called on the Israeli goverment to withdraw the threats to revoke Abraham’s and Szor’s citizenship, to respect the filmmakers’ journalistic right to refuse to disclose the identities of confidential sources and to reject changes to public film funding that penalise filmmakers for critical work.

At the time of writing this article, the IDA’s letter has been signed by nearly 300 people, including Hollywood actors Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, who are known for their vocal activism against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli military. Several Oscar-winning filmmakers such as Alex Gibney (who recently made headlines for his new documentary Musk) and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy also signed the letter.

NAZA takes its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate how many civilians are expected to be killed in an airstrike. The documentary received a 25-minute ovation at its Venice premiere.

After its run in cinemas, the film will stream on The Guardian’s website for free in November, as part of the news organisation’s commitment to the dissemination of independent journalism.

In the video, two special moments from the actor’s career play together: her twirling as Khirad in the famous 2011 drama and her twirling as Bilqees Bano in her new show, Mitti De Baway, which premiered this month around the same time of year as Humsafar did 15 years ago.

Mahira wrote a heartfelt message to her fans, calling them her “dearest, my most precious Humsafars” and saying it had been “15 years of loving and twirling in that love”.

“15 years…. Of surrendering to life, to the characters I picked and those that were picked for me. It is surreal to have Mitti De Baway air on the same day that Humsafar was aired that many years ago. And even though so much has changed, all of you have remained the same for me. My constants. My backbone and my strength. From Khirad to Bilo… I am filled with nothing but shukr. Here’s to all of you… here’s to a lifetime of being each other’s humsafars, may there never be judaai. May there never be bewafaai,” the actor wrote.

This is not the first time Mahira has done something special for her fans to celebrate Humsafar. For its 10th anniversary, she held a surprise question-and-answer session on X, which was called Twitter back then.

Humsafar — based on a novel by Farhat Ishtiaq — revolves around two cousins, Khirad and Ashar (played by Fawad Khan), a couple in an arranged marriage who face separation and heartbreak before finding their way back to each other. The drama became a huge hit, not just in Pakistan but all over the world. The show is often credited with giving the Pakistani drama industry a big boost.

It came at a time when many people were tuning into Indian and Turkish shows, but Humsafar proved that Pakistani stories could be just as popular — and even more loved.

The show had a big impact on almost everyone involved. Mahira became a household name and her role as the strong-headed and uncompromising Khirad made her one of Pakistan’s most loved actors. She later made her Bollywood debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Raees.

Fawad became a star across the border too, appearing in hit Hindi films such as Khoobsurat, Kapoor & Sons and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. For director Sarmad Khoosat, Humsafar made him one of the most respected creators on television and he later went on to make famous films such as Manto and Zindagi Tamasha and, more recently, Lali.

Now, 15 years later, Mahira is winning hearts all over again with Mitti De Baway. The new drama, set in Punjab, stars her alongside Wahaj Ali. It has already received glowing reviews after just a couple of episodes.

Earlier this month, Mahira, 41, also revealed she is expecting her second child during her appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival. It marks a new chapter for her, coming years after the birth of her 17-year-old son Azlan.

Between the Humsafar anniversary, the praise for Mitti De Baway and her pregnancy news, Mahira is having a remarkable month.

So, for Mahira, the twirling goes on — from one iconic character to the next, with her Humsafar fans watching every step of the way.

These numbers suggest a golden age, but this success also raises a critical question: Pakistani dramas have a massive digital footprint — but is the industry ready for a subscription-based streaming model?

ARY Digital has used the recent success of Tamasha Season 5 to benefit its digital ambitions. The massive fan following of the show laid out a timely opportunity for the channel to push its proprietary platform, ARY Plus.

According to the channel’s own early statistics, this appears to have worked, with 10.8 million downloads and a 25-minute average watch time recorded even before the formal app launch.

This suggests an impressive uptake and willingness to engage with the platform. The channel has subsequently moved its premium drama content away from YouTube and onto ARY Plus for domestic viewers.

Currently the app is free to download and use. Viewers can pay to watch Tamasha’s uncut live feed for Rs100 locally and $1 outside Pakistan, offering an early test of viewers’ willingness to pay for extra content.

Salman Iqbal, the CEO of ARY, also recently spoke about a wider home for Urdu content and publicly invited rival networks to participate. His vision for a unified Urdu streaming platform deserves attention but metrics such as the number of downloads, viewing time, and social media buzz can only account for the transactional side of the picture.

What is OTT, anyway?

Over-the-top or OTT television is a digital platform where content is distributed via the internet instead of terrestrial, cable, or satellite networks. By that definition, one can say that Pakistani dramas on YouTube are already OTT. However, streaming is much more than digital distribution. It requires an optimised platform specifically engineered for on-demand viewing.

Most of the recent conversation around ARY Plus has addressed the business and transactional questions surrounding audience migration, advertising revenue, and the value of owning viewer data. Unfortunately, these conversations are missing the mark on the creative and technical aspect: are Pakistani dramas being made to the same standards expected of the shows competing in a global streaming catalogue or are broadcasters placing conventional television inside a new container?

Are Pakistani screenplays OTT ready?

The first test facing Pakistani content is the screenplay. So far, the industry has been successful in conflating storytellers, screenwriters, and dialogue writers into one role. A story determines what happens, whereas a screenplay dictates how it unfolds visually on screen.

Traditionally, Pakistani dramas have remained overly reliant on conversations to explain emotions and plot developments. Commercial success, reinforced by weekly broadcast schedules and ad breaks, has become a creative limitation in screenwriting. This also points to the shortcomings of channels in hiring professionals capable of translating brilliant stories into greater screenplays.

Viewing behaviour on a streaming platform is vastly different. Instead of waiting for weekly episodes, users can watch several episodes consecutively, and this is where the slow pacing and talkative approach may not work, as the content may appear repetitive across multiple episodes and the audience can abandon a series within minutes.

This does not mean every show must follow the breakneck pacing of a Netflix production — a slow burn can be extremely engaging when silence, behaviour, and atmosphere reveal something new. To thrive on streaming, Pakistani dramas will need to be treated as disciplined and controlled projects, conceived as limited series — where the depth of a story determines its length, rather than inherited television slots that force channels to stretch a 10-episode conflict across 30.

Is the visual execution OTT-ready?

Traditionally, Pakistani drama’s visual execution has felt flat and static. It has followed a familiar template: a static camera moves between wide shots, medium shots, and close-ups, with limited to no movement within a scene. Global streaming content stands out because the camera movements are purposeful. They reveal characters, direct attention, or change the emotional pressure of a scene rather than acting as a tool to record conversations from a fixed position.

Recently, Dar-e-Nijaat attempted to break that pattern. It experimented with dolly zooms — where the camera pulls back while zooming in to create a disorienting effect — and low-angle body-mounted shots. Together, these effects let the viewers in on the character’s psychological and emotional state. This is a welcome shift in cinematography, but these shots are very few and far between with the serial mainly falling back to static conversational scenes.

Similarly, colour grading — which includes adjusting the colour of a shot, its contrast and tone — needs to be used as a critical storytelling tool to maximise the intended impact. Both HUM TV’s Zanjeerain and Netflix’s Kohrra (2025) rely heavily on their locations, but each uses them differently.

While Zanjeerain’s cinematography lets us in on the scale and rugged beauty of the mountainous setting, its colour grading does not always transform the landscape into the drama’s emotional tension.

In contrast, Kohrra’s depiction of rural Punjab in India through muted earth tones, a washed-out grey-blue palette and persistent haze makes it feel cold, dense, and morally obscured, a visual ambition yet to be matched by Pakistani drama. The atmosphere it creates carries the same grief and conflict as the characters. This is the power of colour grading. It not only establishes where the story is taking place but also tells us how the world feels, elevating an environment from just scenery to a dramatic force.

Pakistani drama enjoys a reach far beyond Urdu-speaking audiences. It has a loyal fan following across the Gulf, Britain, Australia, and North America. Therefore, production and creative teams must explore ways of reaching non-Urdu-speaking audiences authentically.

That means using accurate subtitles and dubbing rather than translating Urdu dialogue word for word. These subtitle and dubbing assets must be planned during production — a popular on-air drama that skips this step will incur extra costs for redoing subtitles and dubbing later, and in many cases, this simply cannot be done at all.

Can ARY Plus retain viewers and achieve scale?

ARY’s decision to restrict access to its premium dramas on YouTube could backfire. On one hand, it is keeping the dramas free on YouTube internationally, which brings in global advertising revenue and pulls in new audiences outside Pakistan. On the other, domestic viewers will be directed to ARY Plus, giving ARY greater control over local advertising, distribution, and user data.

It will also divide viewers across two platforms. After all, it was YouTube that gave Pakistani dramas the massive following they enjoy today, which is exactly what ARY now risks cutting into.

The real test for ARY Plus is whether it can hold on to local advertising control without driving away the very viewers that YouTube built for Pakistani drama.

But even if ARY solves the distribution problem, it needs to give the viewers a good enough reason to return – and any future paid offering would need to earn its price.

What will make Pakistani drama truly OTT-ready?

The industry has it all — exceptional artists, recognisable story writers, emotionally directed storytelling, and an unmatched understanding of family dynamics, class aspirations, and social reputation. These stories resonate with millions across the globe because their emotions are universal, even when they are unmistakably Pakistani.

The channel leadership must build an ecosystem to further promote talent. They will need to stop relying on television libraries and start commissioning quality-controlled and professionally localised projects built for streaming to compete with global streaming platforms. They will also need to be forthcoming in credibly reporting viewer retention, not just download counts.

YouTube has over the years proven a genuine demand for Pakistani drama. You don’t need to understand Urdu or live in Pakistan to get hooked on a story about love, family, and sacrifice — billions of views prove that. But one mustn’t assume that “views are subscriptions” — they are both very different commitments.

Watching something for free costs nothing; paying for it means the content must be good enough that people choose it over everything else competing for the same rupee.

ARY is moving its dramas behind the walls of its own app for viewers in Pakistan. The real test is whether they’ll follow. Will the app give them a reason to keep coming back? Will they ever be ready to pay for the content? And will the industry finally start making shows worth paying for?

The festival, which is the only South Asian festival where winning can qualify a film for Oscar consideration, has a lineup of 136 titles, including 21 features.

The festival announced Lali’s opening night screening on its Instagram page on Thursday.

The film will be screened on October 15 at 6pm local time at the Tasveer Film Centre. The show will be preceded by a red carpet walk and the cast and crew will host a session with the audience after the credits roll.

There also be a gala dinner with live music and a DJ.

For those unfamiliar, Lali revolves around Zeba (played by Mamya Shajaffar), a young woman who gains the label of as a “cursed bride” after three of her previous suitors die under mysterious circumstances.

Lali “examines the fear, shame, and violence that lie beneath intimate relationships,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “With a keen eye for human complexity, it seeks to confront and release the suppressed forces that continue to suffocate many unions.”

In addition to Shajaffar, Lali boasts an ensemble cast, featuring Joyland’s Rasti Farooq and Churails star Meher Bano. The film’s score has been composed by Abdullah Siddiqui.

The film is joined at Tasveer by Habiba Nousheen’s documentary The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony and five short films from Pakistani filmmakers — Farqalit Gharshin’s Tsrak, Kamran Faiq’s The Last Glance, Basir Ahmed’s Khazana, Ali Mehdi’s Shireen and Ravia Rasool’s Silence on Set.

Pakistan has had an impressive record at past editions of the Tasveer Film Festival, with Wakhri opening its 2024 edition alongside an Indian title.

In 2019, Ahmed Ali Akbar’s Laal Kabootar took home the festival’s Archana Soy Audience Choice Award for Best Feature Film.

The chilling new documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor highlights Israel’s AI-powered mass killing of civilians in Gaza. In the film, Abraham and Szor used conversations with 24 different Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who spoke on condition that their identities be protected. “We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did,” Abraham said.

“After its run in cinemas, the film will stream on The Guardian’s website, for free, as part of the news organisation’s commitment to the dissemination of independent journalism,” the British publication reported on Thursday.

“NAZA is grounded in rigorous journalism published over the past three years,” said Harry Davies, an investigations correspondent at The Guardian and one of the producers of NAZA. “But it is also a powerful piece of cinema that will soon be available on screens, large and small, around the world,” he added.

NAZA made headlines earlier this month after its filmmakers received a 25-minute ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere.

The documentary prompted backlash in Israel, including from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who even went as far announcing that his government will seek legislation to revoke the citizenship of anybody seeking to slander or defame Israeli soldiers or the state.

“The first, to revoke ​the citizenship of anyone who defames [Israeli] soldiers, and the second to hit them in their pockets and ​increase the statutory damages for defamation they can be sued for by 20 times,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on the internet.

“We ⁠will hit them both in their pockets and in their citizenship, as their place is not with us,” he added.

NAZA draws its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that are expected to be killed in an airstrike. It was described as an “urgent, gut-punch” by film magazine Screen, while The Hollywood Reporter said it inspired “outrage…indignity as well. Most certainly disgust, on a profound level, for the current Israeli regime”.

Well, we got an answer from Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions on Wednesday. Brace yourselves for the trailer of Udta Teer, a ‘comedy’ that leans into stereotypes and jokes so ridiculous, it’s difficult to imagine someone actually sat down and green-lit this project.

The trailer of Bollywood’s umpteenth Pakistan-obsessed film starts with a narrator telling the audience that India keeps sending spies to Pakistan, but the Pakistanis have finally found the ultimate answer to their adversary’s antics: Bilal Ahmed, played by Ayushmann Khurrana.

The trailer makes it clear that Bilal is, for all intents and purposes, the Pakistani equivalent of Dhurandhar’s Jaskirat Singh Rangi. He’s seen dodging bullets, leaping from explosions and walking through a military installation like he owns the place.

The narrator is quick to point out, “Our guy is no ordinary spy. He’s got passion in his heart, a fire in his eyes and just one cry on his mind…” The scene then cuts to Bilal waving an Indian flag and chanting “Bharat Mata Ki Jai (Glory to Mother India).”

Okay, now if we gave Bollywood the benefit of the doubt and stopped watching here, it would be reasonable to assume he’s simply undercover and trying to blend in… but it gets worse.

Turns out Bilal, if we can even call him that anymore, got hit in the head while leaping from yet another explosion and lost his memory. So, naturally, the Indians nursed him back to health, convinced him he was an Indian with a tragic, anti-Pakistan backstory and gave him a job in a counter terrorism unit — which raises less questions about Pakistan and more about who the Indians would let onto a counterterrorism team.

Of course, Bilal only forgot his nationality and his entire life story — his martial arts skills are as good as ever and he fits right in. The double agent — if he even counts as one — starts dropping ‘terrorists’ left and right until he comes to the realisation that they are led by a shadowy figure named Bilal Ahmed.

If that makes you want to shake some sense into the guys, we are glad to report that his Indian colleagues tried, they even told him he was Bilal, but the man is just in too deep.

To add to all this, there’s the apparent primary villain, a portly caricature of a terrorist with a terrible accent who needs to get himself in shape — and from one scene where he’s on an app called “Hinder”, find himself a Mrs Terrorist. Obviously, he speaks with the hardened kh sounds and a surplus of janaabs that are a staple of Muslim (mis)representation in Indian cinema.

The rest of the trailer is your usual Indian spy movie stuff, more gunshots, more explosions, some angry members of Pakistan’s top brass and, of course, romance shots up in the mountains.

Judging by the trailer, Bollywood seems to have lost the plot entirely. We get that jingoism and propaganda is selling out Indian theatres and that Bollywood comedies aren’t in a great place right now, but this is ridiculous.

In fact, it’s not just ridiculous, it’s harmful. Where art is supposed to bring people together, this film seems to aspire to create a twisted version of the Two Minutes Hate from George Orwell’s 1984 where, the audience is in hysterics instead of visible rage. The hysterics, of course, are socially mandated just like in the rage in the book.

We don’t know yet if Udta Teer will be a commercial success when it comes out next month — and we hope audiences have the good sense not to go watch it in theatres — but it is indicative of long-term societal problems.

The fact that a movie so ridiculous with some rather obvious hate for India’s largest religious minority is allowed to go to production, much less screen in theatres, shows that Bollywood’s propaganda machine has already done some serious damage.

In recent years, Pakistani dramas have given us glimpses into infidelity — not as scandals but as windows into the human psyche. From the sugar daddy in Bismil and the religious hypocrite in Aap Ki Izzat to the rare portrayal of a female cheating spouse in Mere Pass Tum Ho and the transactional marriage in a sub-plot of Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum, these dramas expose their characters’ flaws, emotional voids and psychological wounds that drive them to betray their partners.

They invite us to look beneath the surface and ask what compels someone to betray the person they once vowed to cherish. They reveal the anatomy of a choice.

Bismil: the sugar daddy and the gold digger

Tauqeer Taseer (Noman Ejaz) possesses everything a man is supposed to desire: a loyal wife, Reham (Savera Nadeem), a son about to get married and a successful business he has built over decades. Yet, he lacks something less tangible: a sense of his own significance. That emptiness, more than anything else, pushes him towards Masooma (Hareem Farooq), his wife’s employee — and this ultimately proves to be his undoing.

This ‘Sugar Daddy’ dynamic is rarely just about sex. It is about power, the need to feel chosen, desired and necessary. Masooma offers TT a mirror where he sees the version of himself he misses: a young man with options. She, however, is not attracted to him but to his wealth and what it can provide.

From mid-life crises and material ambition to secret marriages, Pakistani dramas often explore the wounds, desires and self-deceptions behind infidelity. A mental health professional examines through four dramas what they tell us… and what they don’t

The ‘Gold Digger’ is not born. She is taught to see marriage as a route to security and status in a culture that equates a woman’s worth with the status of the man she marries and this leaves her with few other options.

TT’s error is not desire but believing boredom justifies destruction. He had other paths: conversation, counselling and even divorce. Instead, he chooses concealment. The ideal family he spent decades building becomes collateral damage.

Aap Ki Izzat: the secret nikaah and the woman who rebels

In public, Tabish (Ahsan Khan) champions women’s rights. In private, he gaslights his wife Beena (Urwa Hocane) and decides to marry his secretary, Naaz (Alina Khan), as he feels that Naaz is more socially fit and useful for his new political career.

What makes Beena’s story even more devastating is not that she was betrayed but that she is asked to absorb it silently. Her mother tells her to be grateful. Her best friend tells her to forgive and adjust. Fourteen years of devotion become the argument — she has given so much to the marriage and shouldn’t throw it away. This is the cruel arithmetic of a society that measures a woman’s life in years served rather than dignity retained.

Beena makes a choice that may defy morality and logic but makes psychological sense. She does not leave conventionally or seek khulaa (a divorce initiated by the wife). She runs away with her sabzi wala, a vegetable vendor with neither status, wealth nor promise.

It is easy to dismiss this as madness. But look closer: it is the act of a woman famished for recognition. A stranger gazed at her as if she mattered. He offered nothing but acknowledgement. For Beena, that was more precious than the home she abandoned. Beena had permissible paths like khulaa but knew she would only be advised to stay grateful and quiet. So she chose the only exit she could think of.

Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum: the transaction

Adeel (Emmad Irfani) is set to marry Sharjeena (Hania Aamir). When his super-rich boss, Rubab (Naeema Butt), hears about it, she proposes to him. They tie the knot as Adeel realises Rubab can provide financial benefits Sharjeena can’t.

Adeel believes love can be traded for a better life. Rubab believes love can be acquired and purchased like a desirable object but, to be fair to her, she does love Adeel. However, neither views intimacy as a meeting of equals, because neither was taught what that looks like.

Their marriage is therefore a merger, not a union. Mergers collapse when the assets fail to perform. Trapped in a life built on appearances, Adeel manipulates Rubab’s business accounts and begins an affair with her best friend, Natasha (Areej Chaudhary).

Natasha is cast as the home-wrecker but is the story’s most tragic figure. She too married for money and found her life empty. Rather than confronting this, she tries to fill the void by reaching out for another woman’s husband. She does not love Adeel — she loves the idea of a life she never dared claim.

Natasha and Adeel are two people who chose security over integrity and find each other, not through passion, but through recognition. They are not lovers. They reflect the same despair.

Mere Pass Tum Ho: glitter over gold

Danish (Humayun Saeed) and Mehwish (Ayeza Khan) have been married for several years and have a young son. While Danish is irrevocably and madly in love with Mehwish, she is not — and therefore chooses to betray Danish when Sheharyar (Adnan Siddiqui) enters their lives.

Mehwish’s betrayal is not fuelled by passion but by her hunger for wealth, status and the life she believes she deserves. Danish may offer her love and steadiness, but Sheharyar offers money and excitement. Her calculations reflect the twisted reasoning of someone who learned to measure a woman’s fulfilment in material terms because of the society she lives in. She has never learned that love itself can be a form of wealth.

Sheharyar’s cowardice is the drama’s real revelation. He offers Mehwish no protection, no commitment and has no courage. The story doesn’t punish her for being a woman. It is punishing her for choosing a man whose wealth always outweighed his integrity.

However, a double standard is exposed. Audiences judged Mehwish more harshly than TT, Tabish or Adeel ever were. Why? Because society still expects women to be the guardians of marital honour while men’s failings are brushed aside and excused.

The psychology of betrayal

What causes infidelity? It’s rarely the physical aspect.

• The Hunger for Validation: The cheating spouse is sometimes propelled by an anxious craving for validation or a deep urge to flee intimacy and difficult conversations. Tabish clings to Naaz because his ego withers without praise. TT seeks Masooma to outrun time. Adeel chases an ego lift. Mehwish hungers for flattery and fortune. None of them is searching for true love. They all seek relief from something they can’t name or don’t have.

• When Youth Slips Away: As people get older, many confront a burning question: is this all there is to life? This is not a moral failing but a transition. Handled correctly, it can produce renewed purpose. If not, it can, among other things, produce extramarital affairs — an attempt to recapture youth, overcome performance anxiety, escape from difficult conversations about intimacy, or gain an improved self-image through someone else’s eyes.

• When Money Replaces Meaning: In most dramas, the affair is tied to money. That is because wealth is viewed as the ultimate yardstick to gauge self-worth and the spark for betrayal. When money reigns supreme, love becomes irrelevant.

• The Illusion of an Upgrade: Every cheating spouse imagines they are stepping toward something better. In truth, they are only fleeing what feels unbearable. They forget running away is not the same as finding a new refuge.

• Filling the Void Within: The betrayer doesn’t commit a crime of passion. Instead, they try to fill the void in their lives by cheating on their spouses. Many times, they carry self-loathing and shame and try to escape them. However, the emptiness in their lives does not leave. It deepens.

What dramas miss out on when exploring infidelity

For all their layers, these dramas leave crucial ground unexplored. What remains unsaid shapes what we cannot understand.

• The Work Behind Rebuilding Tr­u­st: For couples who stay together, rebuilding trust and redeveloping genuine intimacy are essential, be it by holding hands or resting their head on their spouse’s shoulder as a sign of trust. In reality, neither happens quickly. Healing is slow and trust is the hardest to reclaim. Dramas skip this part. Either the marriage ends or the wounds heal overnight magically.

• Male Mental Health: Depression in men often presents itself not as sadness but as irritability, risk-taking, detachment and, sometimes, infidelity. TT’s boredom, Adeel’s restlessness, Tabish’s hunger for admiration and Sheharyar’s narcissism may be symptoms of depression no one identifies or talks about. Men in dramas rarely examine the invalidation, distress, insecurity or dissatisfaction driving their behaviour. Dramas never show men being raised to seek help. Instead, many avoid difficult emotions, externalise distress, or seek validation elsewhere.

• Escaping Economic Entra­pm­e­nts: Many dramas show women staying in unfaithful marriages because they cannot afford to leave. Financial dependence is a powerful constraint but should not become a narrative dead-end. Women who lack financial independence can find ways to leave, seek support from family or community, pursue khulaa or rebuild their lives on their own terms. Dramas rarely explore these possibilities. Instead, financial dependence is often treated as if it automatically means a woman has no choice. Reham and Rubab, by contrast, have the financial freedom to walk away, but their stories raise a larger question: what choices are available to women without that freedom?

• The Absence of Therapy: Not one character sees a therapist or a couple’s counsellor, despite being urbane, ‘upper class’ and educated for the most part. This is the most glaring omission of all in many dramas, although they are increasingly focusing on ‘racy’ themes. Exploring one’s inner world through therapy can give meaning to behaviour. The trauma, often hiding in one’s unconscious from their earlier years, memories, regrets, unmet needs and deprivations, can shape adult behaviour unless examined, processed, resolved and healed. And that’s exactly what therapy aims to do.

• The Impact on Spouses…: The betrayed spouse is not just heartbroken. For some, the experience can be destabilising and may produce trauma-like symptoms. Shame can convince them that, if they were enough, their partner would not have strayed. Identity erosion can unsettle the person they thought they were. Sleep, appetite, concentration and a sense of safety can all be affected. Research suggests that infidelity can produce clinically significant post-traumatic stress symptoms in some people, although the severity and duration vary. For men, the social pressure can be even bleaker. They are expected to swallow pain, not process it. When they speak, they risk mockery or dismissal. This silence becomes its own private hell.

• …and the Estranged Couple’s Children: We often forget the children. But they are always watching. Young children cannot grasp infidelity, but they feel the tension between their parents. They internalise the anxiety as their own. Their sense of safety — the foundational belief that home is a secure base — can be shattered. Older children bear different scars. They understand too much and anger, betrayal and confusion swirl within them. Respect for the cheating parent may vanish. Their own relationships can also become battlegrounds, haunted by the fear of repeating their parents’ cycle. Infidelity can even become an intergenerational wound — a blueprint for dysfunction that is passed down the line.

The takeaway: the case file is still open

These dramas don’t pretend that marriage is easy and nor do they claim every union should be saved. Instead, they whisper a harder truth: your character is revealed not by what you desire, but by what you do with that longing.

They also reveal that betrayal is seldom sudden. It starts with self-justification: the belief that one deserves more, that marriage is a barrier, that someone else can restore what is missing, or that consequences can be postponed. By the time the affair surfaces, the psychological groundwork has already been laid.

TT seeks to feel significant again and reclaim his youth. Tabish wants validation and the freedom to construct a new life without having to confront the damage he has done to his previous one. Mehwish mistakes material security for fulfilment and thinks she is securing her future. Adeel treats marriage as an economic calculation and cheating as an ego boost. Beneath these differences, however, the mechanism is remarkably similar: internal dissatisfaction becomes a reason to violate an external commitment.

Each character had choices — honesty, confrontation, separation, counselling, khulaa or acknowledging the hard truth that desire does not equal entitlement. However, what they actually did was perform surgery on themselves — and cut out the wrong organ. They removed loyalty, integrity and self-respect and kept the tumour of their own unmet needs. Then they wondered why they were still bleeding.

Perhaps more importantly, what is not examined is that cheating is not always the disease. It can be a symptom. The disease is the wound beneath it, caused by myriad reasons: an ego that cannot tolerate ageing, a hunger that cannot be satisfied, an emptiness no amount of money, admiration, or new people can fill.

These reasons do not excuse betrayal. To understand is not to absolve. In fact, understanding makes responsibility and reality harder to escape from.

These dramas might tempt us into judging who was right and who was wrong. But the deeper question is: how do people arrive at a place where doing the wrong thing seems like the only option left?

And once the damage has been done, how can it ever be repaired, both for the person who caused it and the people who had no choice but to bear the weight of the betrayal and live with its repercussions?

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, September 20th, 2026

He shared a post on Instagram on Tuesday with one of his signature cryptic captions, saying he had earned a new compliment. The post had pictures and a video of Zafar from the show’s set.

In his caption, the actor wrote that the “difference between fictional characters and real human beings needs to be established” because it appears to be “missing” for most people. He also seemed to explain the way he chooses his projects, keeping the story’s meaning a primary criterion.

Zafar said he took on Raqaas because it dealt with “suppression of expression” women and girls face in society, especially in their homes.

On September 20, Afgan was appearing on the drama review show Kya Drama Hai when she compared Zafar’s characters in Raqaas and Zanjeerain. She said the latest one was like Zanjeerain’s Sarbuland if he was like “like when you take the air out of a balloon and it shrivels”.

When she pushed on, referring to him as a two-day-old birthday balloon, Nadia Khan piped up to say he looked like a tire with insufficient air pressure.

Afgan said she felt there was an attempt to paint Zafar’s character as a brooding, arrogant hero similar to Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice or Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. However, she said the dialogue for the role didn’t fit that description.

She said Zafar was just new to acting and that it would take him a little bit to polish himself.

During the programme, the participants praised the last episode of Zanjeerain, with Afgan even commending Zafar and his co-star Sajal Ali for delivering their best performance in the show during the final episode.

Zafar had a few more bones to pick in his caption, where he called for an end to “the toxicity surrounding ‘shipping culture’”. He also regretted how digital advancement had driven people away from each other when it was supposed to bring them together.

In a statement that may or may not be aimed at Afgan, Zafar said, “Kindly adjust your frequency.”

The settlement marks a major win for Paramount CEO David Ellison, who battled the states for months to finalise a deal that would dramatically concentrate power across Hollywood’s film, TV, streaming and news businesses.

Paramount agreed to abide by temporary film quotas and a news oversight committee, avoiding a forced sale of cable assets such as CNN or any of its lucrative film franchises.

The settlement delighted Warner Bros shareholders, but drew criticism from opponents of the merger who say it will hurt Hollywood jobs. Shares of Paramount pared back earlier gains on Monday, while Warner Bros Discovery surged more than 10 per cent.

The Writers Guild of America settled its parallel case against Paramount, while saying it still believes the deal will damage the industry. The states’ settlement forced the union to “contend with the reality of forging ahead alone, with no backing from government enforcers” in a complex case that would have cost millions of dollars.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the settlement “a strong antitrust outcome”.

“More production, more choice, and guardrails that keep this industry competitive. I don’t think these two companies should merge, but that’s not something that we are focused on with our resolution here,” he said at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Paramount promised in the state settlement to bring more film production to the US — spending at least $300 million more each year in domestic production — and adhere to US theatrical release quotas for five years.

The company will produce 30 movies in each of the first two years of the deal, and 32 movies in each of the following three years, Bonta said. Each year, at least four of those films must be independent films and at least 20 per cent must be blockbusters. If it falls below that threshold, it will pay $30 million per film, most of it into funds to support workers.

Paramount also promised not to raise rates on theater operators for three years.

Under the settlement terms, Paramount will establish a news editorial independence board to ensure independence at the CBS and CNN networks.

Reuters first reported on Friday that Paramount and the states could settle as soon as the weekend.

Ellison thanked the states and California Governor Gavin Newsom for his support throughout the process.

“Our goal has always been to build a stronger Hollywood — one with more stories told, greater choice for consumers and stronger competition,” he said in a statement.

While Trump administration regulators cleared the deal, a coalition of 12 state attorneys general, led by California’s Bonta, sued in July to block the merger, arguing it would reduce competition and create a media behemoth with the power to raise prices in movies and television.

The Writers Guild also sued to stop the deal, arguing it would decrease pay and worsen working conditions for film and TV writers.

The companies said earlier this year the merger will mean $6 billion in savings, through moves including cost cuts that would likely affect jobs across Hollywood as well as in the CNN and CBS newsrooms. The combined company is expected to hold $80 billion in debt.

The settlement helps Paramount avoid a $7 million-a-day ticking fee it would have owed Warner shareholders for each day the deal does not close past September 30.

Antitrust regulators in other jurisdictions globally, including the European Union and Britain, have already cleared the deal.

In one scene from the film — which is touted as a celebration of the South Asian diaspora in the US — Maya (played by Never Have I Ever’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) tells another girl “guys throw themselves at you like you’re the last flight out of Kabul”.

Naturally, netizens were shocked and appalled. Some even had to take a moment to come to terms with what they’d heard.

A lot of the criticism was directed at Hasan Minhaj, the prominent South Asian comedian who produced the film and was one of the screenwriters. There was also some shade cast at director Lena Khan.

Best of the Best is the story of a young girl joining the Bollywood-fusion dance team at her university. Speaking to Variety, Khan said South Asian representation in Hollywood was often limited to nerdy side characters and comic relief. “We can be proud of things that we do as South Asians,” she said.

One user said the whole thing was “distasteful, disgraceful and downright wrong”.

Others said Netflix should acknowledge the offence caused by the joke and apologise to Afghans.

For those in need of a lesson in recent South Asian history, the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, ending nearly two decades of continued military presence in the country.

The climax of the withdrawal came in mid-August, when Kabul fell to the Taliban and evacuation flights operated by foreign forces became a last hope for many thousands of Afghan civilians.

At the time, videos circulated of desperate crowds surrounding and running alongside military aircraft, including one video in which people tried to cling on to a US jet as it took off from Kabul. Several people were seen falling from the aircraft as it climbed and authorities confirmed seven people had died.

Responding to criticism regarding the latest turn of events in the story, the actor took to Instagram on Sunday to talk about what, according to her, the main message of the drama actually is.

“The story is less about telling women that they can’t or shouldn’t, heal on their own, and more about questioning the double standard around redemption — how easily a man can make mistakes, seek redemption and be given another chance, while women are often expected to carry the weight of their choices for much longer,” the actor wrote.

“Sometimes, the best way to watch a story is simply to watch it as something that happened to someone. You don’t have to agree with every choice a character makes to understand their emotions or empathise with their journey,” she added, before pointing out how human beings are complicated and not everything needs to “fit neatly into a morally correct” standard.

In another Instagram story, Saleem shared a post that said Dar-e-Nijaat is a journey about a woman finding herself — not a man.

“Sometimes, finding yourself is the love story you needed all along,” Saleem wrote in accompanying text.

For some context: the latest episodes of Dar-e-Nijaat mainly revolved around the lead character, Zaryab, who has been experiencing anxiety and depression as a result of being betrayed and ditched by her long-time boyfriend and childhood sweetheart Zamil (played by Nameer Khan).

In episodes 14 and 15, which aired on Friday and Saturday, Zaryab experiences what appears to be a panic attack. Her family tries to calm her down, but she doesn’t seem to get any better. It is only after her prospective love interest, Abu Bakr (played by actor Sheheryar Munawar) enters the picture, recites verses from the Holy Quran to bless a glass of water and gently helps her drink it that she is able to get up and walk.

This particular scene, as it turns out, didn’t go down so well with some viewers, who believe the drama is sending a problematic message: that women experiencing heartbreak need the support of a man to heal and recover.

This user on X pointed out that Zaryab’s character needs therapy — not a man.

Another believes the drama seems to be romanticising the idea of women being saved by men. She argued instead that one must be their own healer.

One user said the part about Abu Bakar “coming to save” Zaryab is unrealistic.

But that, as Saleem pointed out, isn’t the point. Instead, the drama focuses on how much more difficult the path of religious redemption is for women compared to men.

On one hand, we’ve got Zaryab, who seems to be struggling to move on with her life because she feels guilty for living with Zamil without marriage. On the other hand, we have Zamil, who cruelly and swiftly broke up with Zaryab as soon as he rediscovered religion, claiming he is entitled to turn over a new leaf while she isn’t. He married someone he thought was a pious enough partner for him, without any self-reflection whatsoever and, going by some conversations in the last two episodes, he will soon be able to live with his family again.

Meanwhile, Zaryab is in the pits of despair, reconsidering all her life choices. She is unable to move forward, or even think about marrying someone else, because she feels her sin is bigger than Zamil’s.

This imbalance in the feeling of guilt and subsequent self-reflection between the woman and the man, according to Saleem, is the point of the story.

In a story posted to his Instagram account on Friday, Shah called the trailer “cringe-worthy” and “trashy”. Speaking to Images, he said the film was even worse.

Images has reached out to Farooq for a comment, but had not received a response till the publication of this article.

The filmmaker said the film was his brainchild and that he had started working on it three and a half years ago. He said he wrote the script, cast the roles and brought Farooq onboard as both an actor and a co-producer. He said they wrapped up filming two and a half years ago and four months later he had locked the film’s edit too.

A post from Shamoon Abbasi — the film’s antagonist — made in May 2024 credits Shah as the film’s director and talks about filming having wrapped up.

That’s when, the filmmaker said, Farooq’s team suggested sending the film to be edited further in India. He said the final edit from India arrived a year later and was “very bad”.

He said his original story rested heavily on Ayesha Jehanzeb’s character and claimed the Indian edit cut “more than half of her scenes”. Maira Bangash, he said, received similar treatment.

Shah claimed he told the team he “did not accept this” and that there were “other issues” that arose during this time.

The filmmaker said this was also the time when the government of Punjab granted the team Rs30 million and so he was asked to shoot some more scenes to “justify the funding”. He said he refused outright, saying the opening scene they wanted was not feasible.

Shah said when the film was originally shot, Faysal Quraishi had gotten into shape for the role by building up muscle and growing a “very beautiful beard”. When the team asked to shoot again, Quraishi had changed his appearance for other projects.

The filmmaker said these disagreements led him to withdraw from the project, which continued on without him. He said he wouldn’t have brought up these grievances if Farooq hadn’t first.

On Thursday, journalist Ambreen Fatima posted a clip where she had asked Farooq why Shah’s name was not in the trailer’s credits. The actor laughed and said, “Whoever works [on the film] will have their name [in the credits].”

When pushed further, she said that she “can’t say too much” but that “a lot of things would come to light soon”.

But did you know that she wasn’t originally a part of the main cast?

Actor Ayesha Omar, who plays one of the leads on the show, made this revelation on Wednesday on Good Morning Pakistan. She said when Bulbulay first hit screens in 2009, it was a completely different show. The original cast consisted only of Nabeel Zafar as Nabeel, Omar as Khoobsurat and Mehmood Aslam as Mehmood sahab.

However, the trajectory of the show changed entirely when Dilpazeer was called in as a guest star and her portrayal of the eccentric, loud and utterly lovable Momo struck a chord with audiences instantly.

“In one episode, Hina Dilpazeer was called in as a guest character to play Nabeel’s mother. That episode went on to become a major hit, bringing in remarkable ratings. They (the showrunners) eventually decided to call her in as a stock character,” Omar said.

“What do you mean? She wasn’t a part [of the show]?” exclaimed Adnan Siddiqui, another guest.

“The first 26 episodes were only supposed to have Mehmood sahab, Nabeel and me. Their story was something else entirely,” Omar explained, before pointing out that the three main characters were living under the same roof in an apartment, without marriage in the equation.

“So, we thought this was an odd thing. Then, Hina aapa came into the picture and so Nabeel and I had to get married. And then Hina aapa got married to Mehmood sahab. So, we became a family,” she added.

And that’s how Bulbulay came to be.

During her appearance on Good Morning Pakistan, Omar also disclosed that she didn’t want to do the show as a long-term project as her mother had some apprehensions about the role. But she decided to stay on after Dilpazeer joined in.

The show ended up becoming so popular that it celebrated its 16th anniversary last year, Omar added.

It looks like Dilpazeer’s addition to the show changed more than character arcs for the show — it turned Bulbulay into the juggernaut sitcom it is today.

It starts with Quraishi’s Murad Jutt — lovingly called Mango Jutt because he’s “both sweet and pretty” — beating some goons with his mad baton skills.

After hitting four guys, Jutt gets hold of a couple of machetes and immediately uses them to slice a fifth guy’s shirt clean off — ninja style.

There is, of course, more to our story’s swashbuckling hero than just his prowess with knives and we get to see that later in the trailer.

But first, the cop — who appears to be working with the Sindh Police, judging by his uniform — is called to Lahore to take care of his nephew and nieces. Before he goes on leave, he’s given one last task: he must try to find the elusive, Lahore-based boss of the thugs he just pureed.

In Lahore, he meets his sister’s friend — presumably named Noor Jehan — played by Quraishi’s co-lead and the film’s producer Hareem Farooq.

In what appears to be another page out of the Bollywood playbook, he lays eyes on her, it’s suddenly raining, there are backup dancers and a voice — that surely cannot be Quraishi’s — says, “After seven full years, my heart is dancing today.”

After some of Jutt’s attempts at flirting go — understandably — awry, we’re surprised to see him in a scene looking at Noor Jehan with the same look a boy would give his first crush and saying, “They’re talking about getting us married.” The girl, clearly, is not interested.

But the story continues and she eventually falls for him — and maybe his crime fighting skills. That’s when we get to see Shamoon Abbasi — the antagonist — and his band of irregular thugs and ruffians with terrible hairlines.

One of the miscreants also wants to marry Noor Jehan, who says she’d “rather have my face beaten in than marry that guy”. Jutt, being ever the chivalrous gentleman, literally shakes her back to her senses and says, “Look! When you turn around, you’ll see me right behind you.”

Seriously, we’re swooning…

There’s a bit more romantic back and forth between the two and the trailer closes on a scene where Abbasi is dragging Noor Jehan away as his henchman hold Jutt down — the perfect opportunity for him to muster up his strength and toss them all away like Salman Khan or Ajay Devgn…

The film releases in theatres on October 16. The cast also includes Ayesha Jehanzeb, Qaiser Piya, Honey Albela and Maira Bangash.

Directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, NAZA alleges that mass civilian deaths were routinely built into Israeli targeting decisions in Gaza, something Netanyahu and the military reject.

The film, which won a major prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, takes its title from an Israeli military term for ​expected “collateral casualties” and is built around anonymous interviews with intelligence officers and soldiers.

It has drawn a ​backlash in Israel, with the military examining potential legal action against those involved in ⁠it. But it has also played into the charged political atmosphere ahead of Israel’s October 27 ​election, which public opinion polls show Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition could lose.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu accused some of his election rivals ​of failing to take a tough stand against the documentary, saying this made them unfit for office. And on Wednesday, he pledged to advance two bills that he said aimed at addressing the “immense damage” done to Israeli soldiers.

“The first, to revoke ​the citizenship of anyone who defames [Israeli] soldiers, and the second to hit them in their pockets and ​increase the statutory damages for defamation they can be sued for by 20 times,” Netanyahu said in a social media video.

“We ⁠will hit them both in their pockets and in their citizenship, as their place is not with us.”

Netanyahu cited three incidents in proposing the bills: “the recent film NAZA which portrayed [Israeli] officers and soldiers as war criminals”; 2025 remarks by left-wing ex-general turned politician Yair Golan that “a sane country does not kill children as ​a hobby”; and a military ​legal officer’s 2024 leak ⁠of a video showing soldiers abusing a Gaza detainee.

Reuters could not immediately reach the NAZA filmmakers for comment.

In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a law that permits stripping ​citizenship from Israelis who carry out actions that constitute a breach of trust ​against the ⁠state. Any new legislation would likely face similar court challenges.

The NAZA filmmakers say they believe it is important that Israelis watch the documentary and grapple with the narrative it presents.

Gaza health authorities say more than 73,000 Palestinians, ⁠most of ​them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign that ​has left much of Gaza in ruins.

The official Instagram page for DCSAFF posted the news on Tuesday.

Khoosat shared the exciting win in an Instagram story the same day.

“We won an award at DCAFF. Mubarak to my Lali team and bohat shukria to the lovely people who have been bringing our stories to Amreeka for the last 15 years with so much warmth and dedication,” he wrote.

For people who have followed Khoosat’s journey in the entertainment industry, this latest recognition comes as little surprise. He first made his mark through his television work, most notably by directing Humsafar, which turned out to be a massive hit with audiences not just in Pakistan but across the world. However, it was his transition to the silver screen that cemented his reputation as a filmmaker who tackles difficult subjects with emotional depth and visual flair.

In 2019, his film Zindagi Tamasha earned the Kim Ji-seok Award at the Busan International Film Festival and was selected as Pakistan’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards. It also bagged the Snow Leopard Award for Best Film at the 6th Asian World Film Festival in 2021. But it wasn’t just the accolades that made Zindagi Tamasha special. The film’s well documented journey — delayed in Pakistan amid controversy and eventually released on YouTube — serves as proof of Khoosat’s commitment to his artistic vision despite obstacles.

2022’s Kamli, Khoosat’s more recent offering, achieved a similar level of success when it won him the Best Director award at the 22nd Lux Style Awards.

In February, Lali made history as the first fully Pakistani-produced feature to screen at the Berlinale. Just this month, the film was selected to show at the 70th BFI London Film Festival — the United Kingdom’s biggest film event.

Lali’s story, co-written by Khoosat and Sundus Hashmi, follows Zeba, a young woman branded a “cursed bride” after three of her previous suitors mysteriously die.

What makes this DCSAFF win particularly meaningful is that it isn’t a first for Khoosat. The festival previously honoured him for his contributions to Pakistani television and cinema when Kamli took home Best Director just three years ago.

This latest award is just a confirmation that Khoosat remains one of the most important voices in South Asian cinema who has consistently delivered art that resonates with audiences and critics alike.

“This obsession we have with keeping family together… this, invariably — whether we like it or not — keeps falling on the women, and it thrives on women’s integrity, self-respect and esteem,” Saeed said. “Don’t put the burden of upholding the institution of family on a woman — because she pays its price.”

In Aap Ki Izzat, that price is paid by Urwa Hocane’s Beena, the wife of Ahsan Khan’s Tabish. Saeed plays his mother — a woman who enables his neglect and mistreatment of Beena rather than intervening.

Saeed made the comments during an appearance on the podcast Heart to Haute with Hassan Choudary, where she told the host she had initially turned down the drama because it looked like “too much work.”

She said she was reluctant to take on the role but agreed at the insistence of director Saife Hasan, who she said was the right person to “handle a narrative like this one.”

The actor said characters like these were why people talked about actors throwing tantrums on set — because they were so exhausting to inhabit.

“Most of the time, we’re struggling so much internally, there’s so much internal dialogue, sometimes I would even say, ‘What is it?’ Everyone would then stop for two minutes, then [things would go back to normal]. I did get exhausted in between.”

Saeed said her character was helpless, which is why she resorted to being cruel and manipulative — being this way gave her some semblance of power within the patriarchal family structure. That is not to say her daughter-in-law wasn’t equally, if not more, helpless; her helplessness is what drove her to eventually run away from home.

“Beena has paid a price for building a happy and flourishing home,” Saeed said — the price of becoming “a lost and broken woman.”

“You [Tabish and her in-laws] mentally made her reach a point where she runs away from home with another man.”

The actor said Beena would have left Tabish a long time ago had she been educated, saying her helplessness was the chain keeping her in an abusive relationship.

“I would not judge Beena after what happened to her. That would be the worst thing,” Saeed said, when asked how she personally viewed the character’s decision to abandon her husband.

“What weapons have we given her to fight for herself? What weapons does she have? She has neither an education, nor any skills, nor time [for herself].”

Saeed said parents need to equip their daughters with education, skills, confidence. “Let them speak [up], and listen to what they have to say.”

This is crucial so women don’t have to make degrading choices when faced with a situation like Beena’s, she said.

She also had little patience for Tabish’s side of it, noting simply that “ungrateful people should not be indulged repeatedly.”

Asked whether she thinks Beena should go back to Tabish, the actor answered loud and clear: “No.”

She placed the question within a culture enabling gender-based violence, in which women who leave home and eventually return do so knowing they may be harmed.

“Girls leave their homes, they speak up and say that they are unhappy, that they have no respect or dignity,” she said. “Unless you (society) see a woman — it’s not just about beating her — until it becomes about someone sprinkling fuel on her and burning her, you won’t recognise the pain… You won’t recognise it as almost paralysing pain until someone shoots her.”

Of Beena specifically, Saeed asked: “The state of mind we see Beena in — how long do you think it will take her to come back to just recognising herself as who she is? Who is she? Even if she returns home, who is she?” She added: “Do you think Beena can come back to that? Ever?”

She said that while it was very difficult for any of the characters in Aap Ki Izzat to mend ways that had hardened over time, the only way forward for Tabish and Beena as a couple was to “work very hard and build a new relationship on new grounds.”

Whether that’s realistic is another question. Tabish, she suggested, “might have to stand upside down” to bring her home. Will he be able to invest the time it requires? she wondered.

From the expansive official selection of short and documentary films in the competition this year, nine Pakistani short films have been chosen to screen at the actual event as part of a “special recognition” line up.

Permanent Guest by Sana Zahra Jafri

Set in Lahore, Permanent Guest revolves around 26-year-old Fatin as she and her family prepare for a neighbourhood wedding. Their plans are disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Shabeer, Fatin’s 70-year-old uncle. This creates the film’s primary tension as old traumas resurface.

We Really Are Pakistan (WRAP) by Saba Karim Khan

The story of three restaurant workers in Karachi’s Gizri, WRAP is a dive into the city’s underground rap scene and how three young men are battling adversity to pursue their passion for music.

Khazana by Basir Ahmed

​A short film set in Karachi, Khazana follows a deaf waste collector picking up trash in the city’s streets. A shocking discovery in a landfill leads gets him into hot water with a ruthless gangster and a khazana (treasure) that will change his life forever.

The After: A Chef’s Wish by Umar Riaz​​

The After is the first film about the late Fatima Ali — a Pakistani-American chef who gained a following after her appearance on Top Chef — made with the support and approval of her family. It follows her brother, picking up her mission to bring people together through food and take its joy to underprivileged people.

Raat Jaagay by Mahnoor Nawab​

The story of a long night and a lonely young mother, Raat Jaagay follows a girl as her sleeplessness brings her face to face with the fragile space between hope and despair, and the future that awaits beyond it.

Attock by Awais Gohar

​Set in Attock, the short is the story of a young boy and his beloved pet pigeon. When his father eats the bird in an attempt to cure his Bell’s palsy, the boy is heartbroken and in his misery falls asleep on the roof. When he wakes up, he finds an unexpected gift that turns his sorrow into joy.

Blender by Syed Nabil Hasan Rizvi

Blender follows an old man living an isolated life in a bustling Karachi household and his blender, which he keeps non-functional to find an excuse to keep going into town to get it ‘fixed’. These runs to repair the broken appliance become a way for him to have human connection and a sense of purpose.

How to Kill Your Hunger? by Mehroz Amin

This short film is the story of a struggling middle-aged man, living off leftover food and despair. He revisits a fancy restaurant from his childhood, hoping to relive happier times, but the night spirals into a haunting ordeal that mirrors his inescapable descent into poverty.​

The Send Off by Amina Imran

The Send Off follows Raheela, a girl exiled from her parents’ home for marrying against their wishes. She returns years later to visit her ailing father. Having marital troubles, she needs her parents, but the divide between them is difficult to surmount. Tensions ride high between her and her mother, yet Rahila finds vestiges of her presence in her old home despite estrangement.

Also screening at NAPA are 19 films from around the world that are also be competing for the short film and documentary prize.

Foreign short films playing at the Gandhara Independent Film Festival

• What We Leave Behind by Jean-Sébastien Hamel, Alexandra Myotte
• Paradise Heights by Karl Kai, Robert Mentov
• Legacy of the Sun and Moon by Kiyun Gabriel Sung
• Candy Bar by Nash Edgerton
• Nobody Barks by Júlia Coldwell Serra
• When The Tiger Roars by Lam Can-Zhao
• Brute by Jérémy Comte
• The Monster by Diego de Gracia
• ​The Veil by Gabriel Motta
• ​Buffalo by Cristian Fidel
• ​The Mould Mohammad Reza Nourmandipour
• ​Octopus by George Dogaru
• The Man Who Stumbled By His Words by Mubarak Ali Al-Zawba
• My Plastic Mother by Amar Haikal
• ​Petticoats by Gaëlle Graton
• ​Jazz Infernal by Will Niava
• ​Under The Whether by Putri Sarah Amelia
• ​Who Love The Sun by Arshia Shakiba
• ​Finir au Soleil by Ephrem Koering

Like last year, the festival is running on a hybrid model and there are 60 more title being streamed online on the ARY Plus app. These will be available to audiences from September 18 to 30.

The online line-up includes seven indie feature films, 25 foreign language indie short films and 28 indie fiction and documentary short films from Pakistan.

Results of the festival’s competition will be announced at the event’s closing ceremony on Oct 4 at NAPA.

Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay overcame the final season of previous winner Hacks to earn the comedy prize on Monday night.

Hacks star Jean Smart won her fifth Emmy for portraying tenacious stand-up comic Deborah Vance, and Matthew Rhys became the first person to win two lead acting honours at the same ceremony, including one for his role as a small-town mayor on Widow’s Bay.

Smart’s accolade made her the first performer to win the Emmy for Best Comedy Actress for every season of a show’s run.

“What a ride this has been!” Smart said on stage after thanking the ​creators of the HBO Max show.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won Best Comedy Actress for six of the seven seasons of Veep, is the only woman to come close to Smart’s milestone.

Tensions in Tinseltown

The Emmys offered a rare night of celebration as Hollywood grapples with production cutbacks, anxiety over artificial intelligence and the proposed Paramount Skydance ⁠purchase of HBO owner Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has divided the industry and faces legal challenges.

Winners largely avoided potentially divisive topics in their acceptance speeches and stuck to thanking their ​families and co-stars.

The Pitt actor Noah Wyle said it felt “overwhelming” to land his second straight Emmy for playing Dr ‘Robby’ Robinavitch on the HBO Max medical drama set in a Pittsburgh trauma centre.

Describing himself ​as a “Hollywood kid,” Wyle told the Emmy audience, “This is the only club I’ve ever wanted to join. Thank you for accepting me.”

Rhys claimed awards for Best Comedy Actor for Widow’s Bay and for Best Actor in a Limited Series for the Netflix psychological thriller The Beast in Me.

The Welsh actor said he felt “slightly giddy and a little bit dizzy” to receive the honours.

“At the moment, I genuinely can’t believe what’s just happened,” he told reporters backstage.

“I’m from ​a small country, and I’m glad we get moments to put our flag on the map and say we punch higher than our weight sometimes in Wales,” Rhys added.

In other awards, Widow’s Bay ​star Stephen Root upset favourite Harrison Ford of Shrinking for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy. Widow’s Bay also claimed awards on Monday for supporting actress, directing and writing. Combined with technical and other awards handed out earlier this month, ⁠the show earned 14 Emmys, a record for a comedy in a single season.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which was cancelled by CBS and aired its final episode this year, won Best Variety Series.

HBO Max murder mystery DTF St. Louis won best Limited Series.

Best Drama Actress went to Rhea Seehorn, who plays a misanthropic woman at war with an unfailingly kind alien hive mind on Pluribus, another win on a big night for Apple TV. Seehorn addressed her fellow nominees, including The Diplomat star Keri Russell and Zendaya of Euphoria, with a quote from the feminist activist Gloria Steinem, who died this ​month aged 92.

“We are linked, not ranked. I ​feel that way about all you women,” Seehorn ⁠said.

Emmy winners are chosen by the more than 27,000 writers, directors, performers, producers and craftspeople in the Television Academy.

Michael J Fox honoured for his humanitarian efforts

The academy honoured Michael J Fox during the ceremony for his advocacy for Parkinson’s disease research and treatment.

Speaking from a wheelchair, Fox said support from Hollywood had ​allowed him to keep acting after his own diagnosis with Parkinson’s. “It’s because you stood up for me,” he told the crowd.

Mariska Hargitay, star ​of NBC’s drama Law & Order: ⁠Special Victims Unit, hosted the ceremony, breaking with a tradition of having a comedian serve as emcee. It was broadcast live on NBC and streamed on Peacock.

“It’s a lot of pressure, but it is so reassuring to see so many familiar faces out there, and I’m not just talking about how many of you I’ve arrested on SVU,” Hargitay told the crowd.

In one pre-recorded sketch, Hargitay’s SVU character, Olivia Benson, tried ⁠to piece ​together clues to determine if singer Taylor Swift, an Emmy nominee this year for a concert film, would attend the ​ceremony.

Swift made a surprise cameo in the bit as a rookie detective who pointed out that the singer’s categories had been considered in a separate ceremony a week earlier. Benson correctly deduced that Swift would be in Kansas City watching ​her husband, Travis Kelce, play on Monday Night Football.

Key winners from the 78th Emmy Awards

Best ​Drama Series

The Pitt

Best Comedy Series

Widow’s Bay

Best Limited or ​Anthology Series

DTF St. ​Louis

Best Comedy Actor

Matthew Rhys, Widow’s Bay

Best Comedy ⁠Actress

Jean Smart, Hacks

Best Drama Actor

Noah Wyle, The Pitt

Best Drama Actress

Rhea Seehorn, Pluribus

Best​ Actor, ​Limited ⁠Series or Movie

Matthew Rhys, The Beast ​in Me

Best Actress, Limited ⁠Series or Movie

Sally Field, Remarkably Bright Creatures

Bob ⁠Hope ​Humanitarian Award

Michael ​J Fox

The 13th instalment of the hit ARY Digital drama, which aired on Saturday, prompted strong reactions and discussions over hypocrisy from viewers, following a major plot twist.

Here’s a quick recap of what happened: after years of dating, and even briefly living with his long-time girlfriend and childhood sweetheart Zaryab, played by Dur-e-Fishan Saleem, Zamil — a narcissistic man who has rediscovered religion portrayed by Nameer Khan — ends up marrying an unknown woman from a madressah. And he doesn’t even bother letting Zaryab know.

The break-up, however, isn’t the story here. It’s what Zamil tells Zaryab when she finally shows up at his doorstep, looking for answers.

As an understandably emotional Zaryab confronts Zamil about his decision to abruptly end their relationship in such a cruel manner, he tells her she isn’t fit to be the wife of a good Muslim man.

“The time I spent with you was my era of ignorance. I’ve left all that and to move ahead I needed a life partner who’d help me in my religion. Someone who is pious, pure and innocent,” Zamil says.

“I think God has accepted my repentance and given her to me as a result,” he adds, before telling Zaryab she needs to find someone “like herself” if she wants to get married.

Zaryab then asks him if only a man has the right to repent and Zamil, visibly frustrated, dodges the question by listing the qualities he wants in a pious wife and how Zaryab doesn’t fulfil his newfound standards.

After the episode aired, many were left impressed by Saleem’s portrayal of Zaryab, a heartbroken woman who, at one point, was willing to let go of her admission to Harvard University, just to placate and comfort Zamil, who couldn’t get in himself.

At the same time, the blatant hypocrisy in Zamil’s views on religion and marriage didn’t escape the notice of the show’s fans.

One user on X called Dare-e-Nijat a “masterpiece” by writer Umera Ahmed.

“Zamil is basically [a] representation of [the] average Pakistani man: khud jo marzi karo, lekin biwi hamesha naik, shareef aur parda-daar chahiye (doing whatever they feel like, but always want a wife who is pious, virtuous and keeps herself covered up). Hypocrisy is just too real,” the user added.

Another pointed out how the drama highlights the importance of not losing one’s humility when you believe you have found religion.

Another user commented how the episode could serve as an unfortunate reminder for all women who have been in relationships with narcissists.

One user straight up called Zamil a red flag.

Directed by Saqib Khan, Dar-e-Nijaat features an ensemble cast, including Sheheryar Munawar, Romaisa Khan, Sahar Hashmi, Sania Saeed, Saba Hamid and Nadia Afgan.

According to Sahil, a welfare organisation, 3,172 cases of violence against women were reported in the first half of 2026 in Pakistan — that’s about 17.52 cases a day, and this number doesn’t count what goes unreported. In 884 cases, the perpetrators of violence are relatives; in 405, husbands. Over half the incidents took place at home.

In the drama Aap Ki Izzat, we watch yet another husband, Tabish (Ahsan Khan), plot the murder of his wife, Beena (Urwa Hocane), after years of subjecting her to emotional and physical abuse.

Debate about femicide tends to fixate on the individual man who murders a woman. Here, using Aap Ki Izzat as a case study, I want to look instead at how the people and systems around Tabish produce and sustain conditions that make women’s murders thinkable by enabling, permitting and legitimising patriarchal violence.

Two scenes in Aap Ki Izzat do this work most clearly: Chaudhry suggesting Tabish have Beena killed, and Tabish asking his mother’s permission to do it.

Tabish and Beena, who come from a modest background, get married at a young age. Tabish sees Beena for the first time when he is with his friend, Hafiz (who, 14 years later, also becomes the only person dissuading him from killing his wife), sends a rishta and then marries her.

Deeply in love, young Beena transforms herself into an embodiment of service, selfless love and familial devotion both for Tabish and his family. Beena, who has a complicated relationship with her mother-in-law, never flinches at any of the disparaging comments or instructions from the matriarch; instead, Beena assures her that she’ll treat her as though she were her own mother.

When Tabish’s sister gets married, Tabish doesn’t have any money for the wedding. Newlywed Beena gives her own dowry to his sister. He struggles to start his business; she not only encourages him through all his failures, but also borrows money from her own family to help him. He appreciates the sacrifices that Beena makes — till he becomes rich.

He starts receiving Beena’s care not as her love, but something that he is entitled to, something that she owes him. He turns from a loving husband and non-threatening man to an entitled male chauvinist and the potential murderer of his own wife.

Tabish — even when he was poor — lives within patriarchal entitlement. Beena’s sacrifices are her wifely duties, whereas Tabish’s rare reciprocities are evidence of his generosity. When Beena sacrifices what she owns — her dowry, her time, her labour — and even what she doesn’t own — borrowed money from her family — it is understood as her duty as a devoted wife. But when Tabish gives Beena what she does not even need or want and what he can conveniently afford — expensive gifts — everyone, including Beena’s own mother, instructs her to be grateful for it.

Tabish’s newfound sense of masculinity and power is due to the devotion of his wife and his access to money. He has money, that is why he is powerful; he has a reliable and loyal wife, that is the source of his masculinity. His wealth gives him material power, but Beena’s devotion legitimises his power and determines the extent of the cultural value of his wealth. The fallacious perception is that his wife is loyal and devoted because he has control over her.

But in the patriarchy — a system that creates the conditions where women have limited choices and can’t exercise their agency — Beena’s power in the relationship remains hidden and underestimated.

Women choose safety over exercising their agency — for Beena, Tabish provides all the financial luxuries of life and the safety of a home. She is undereducated, professionally unskilled and socially vulnerable — she has only one friend who is relatively poor and her maika (own family) will not support her emotionally or financially.

Tabish mistakes Beena’s compliance as his inherent authority, though it is co-produced by the limited choices available to her.

Her choice to leave Tabish, although rationally unsound within her sociocultural context, is an attempt to protest the disabling and debilitating patriarchal conditions that disempower her; she leaves her husband and shows him that she will choose dignity over the illusion of safety. She asserts the power that everyone confidently assumed that she did not have in a traditional marriage. She strips Tabish of his power by making a choice that he, and everyone else around Beena, had made impossible for her.

Tabish assumes she has nowhere to go and nobody to turn to, which assures him there will no accountability for how he treats his wife and hence, he becomes emboldened. Tabish’s confidence stems less from his own power than it does from his belief in Beena’s powerlessness.

Tabish, his mother, and his sisters start mocking her weight and appearance around the same time he acquires the resources and status to exercise greater control over her and everyone else in his household. In their exchange of marital value, her labour as a wife and the mother of his children becomes disposable once he gains the wealth to afford other means of wifely and motherly labour in the form of a younger wife and better schools for his kids.

Due to patriarchal norms, everyone trusts that Beena, due to her lack of options, will stay compliant and continue to play her assigned role even at a much-decreased value of her work as a wife, mother, and daughter-in-law.

Everyone sees her unhappiness and the devaluation of her labour but treats it as irrelevant and insignificant. Everyone knows, but nobody intervenes because everyone trusts the marriage in a violent patriarchy to work as intended: Tabish has power, so he does what he wants; Beena puts up with it because the social cost of any other choice is too high.

But when Beena chooses to leave Tabish with the help of a vegetable vendor, she reverses the power hierarchy which Tabish relies on as a Pakistani man. She exercises a form of power that was not allowed to her as a traditional, good wife belonging to a shareef (respected) family.

Tabish, and everyone else’s anger, then, is not only due to a marital betrayal — rather, they’re all enraged by the fact that Beena undoes all their power through her single act of refusal to put up with humiliation.

This hurt is visible in everyone’s shock and repetition of “Beena sabzi walay k sath bhag gai (Beena ran away with a vegetable vendor)?”

Honour is another name for control; Tabish loses control over his wife, hence he loses honour. Since he loses honour, his money also declines in its social value. Despite his riches, his wife still chose a sabzi wala over him. It challenges the hierarchies his masculinity and power depend on. His wife, whom he regards as a possession, rejected him for a much ‘inferior’ man. Eventually, it is not his money that gives him power, it is the control over his wife’s body that makes him powerful in his community.

This resentment over loss of control over Beena shows in Tabish’s language of ownership, for example, when he says, “Uski auqaat se zyada diya usko ([I] gave her her more than she was worth).” He, as a man, enjoyed economic, social and patriarchal power throughout his marriage. Later, his wealth gives him more options and less accountability. His financial protection becomes a debt that Beena must repay through her obedience and humiliation. By leaving him, Beena refuses to take on the debt and pay its emotional cost.

Beena, when leaving him, did not take his money. She did not take his kids. She did not take anything he owned. She did not even fight or dishonour him in words. She just stopped allowing him to control her. He does not lose honour; he just loses control over his wife’s body. Emotionally, Beena had already left. It is the dispossession, loss of control over Beena’s body that creates a crisis for Tabish.

Honour, instead of loss of control, becomes the language that rationalises the wife’s murder. It gives Tabish the licence to commit violence to regain his control and repair his bruised masculinity. By killing Beena, Tabish would show that he still controls her body and what happens to it. The wife’s murder returns the gender hierarchy to its violent normal by making the man in charge again.

Chaudhry, and Tabish’s mother — the only two people who have power over him — both explicitly and implicitly support his decision to kill his wife because his loss of masculinity threatens the hierarchy that they all benefit from.

Chaudhry has invested money in Tabish’s political career, and he needs to restore the impression that he has control over his marriage and family. Chaudhry suggests that Tabish get Beena killed in a police encounter. Chaudhry does not simply suggest murdering her, he proposes a form of socially and institutionally disguised violence.

Tabish has the grievance; Chaudhry as someone with greater power teaches him how to avenge the damage to his masculinity, his power. He tells Tabish that murdering Beena is the only way to save his honour. The police encounter makes the murder appear legitimate or accidental rather than an act of domestic violence.

This murder in a police encounter exonerates and protects Tabish. It eliminates Beena’s body and thereby eliminates the sign of Tabish’s wounded masculinity and loss of control. It reframes the narrative so that his masculinity is intact because it hides the fact that his wife left him. It also erases the relationship between Tabish’s masculinity and Beena’s body.

This murder plot exposes the patriarchal influences within social pressure, showcasing how other men and women validate the idea that violence is an appropriate response to female disobedience.

Hafiz, Tabish’s childhood friend, fails because he is the only person trying to dissuade him from killing Beena. Rather, Tabish reminds Hafiz of his social role by calling him beghairat (dishonourable) when Hafiz calls Beena his sister: “Yaar, tu kitna beghairat hai, ek ghar se bhagi hui larki ko behan keh raha hai (How dishonourable you are, calling a woman who ran away your sister).”

The systemic conditions that empower men to murder their wives prioritise men’s — especially affluent men’s — safety and sense of control, with honour-based violence enabled by existing state and cultural institutions.

The problem is not simply that one man is violent. Rather, peers provide the man with socially recognisable mechanisms through which he can carry out violence. His peers help protect him from any formal and informal forms of accountability.

Tabish’s mother allows him to go ahead with the murder through her silence. She prides herself on Tabish never disobeying her, but never puts Tabish in a position where he might disobey her; she never challenges him, never tells him if or when he is wrong. Underlying this choice is the concern that if she challenges him, he could potentially still do what he wants and she will lose the illusion of her power. Since Tabish obeys her, everyone else in the family must obey her too.

Her power rests on the illusion of her power over Tabish. By challenging Tabish’s power, she fears losing her own power. Tabish asks her “Aap mujhay rok tau nahi rahin (You aren’t stopping me, are you)?” In response, she asks Tabish, “Mere roknay se ruk jao gay tum (Would you stop if I tell you to)?”

Would he stop if she chose to stop him? We would never know. But we have seen enough women’s murders to know that family members often choose to please and protect their sons instead of their daughters-in-law. The same is true for Beena. The mother chooses distance from Tabish’s decision to kill Beena, instead of telling him not to commit the sin of murder.

She recognises Beena’s humanity and history. She knows that Beena is not simply an adulterous wife. She knows as well as everyone else that Beena was slowly pushed to her limits and everyone trusted her to expand her tolerance.

Though she actively benefits from Beena’s service and domestic labour, she tells Tabish, “You married her, you chose her, she’s the mother of your kids, you decide.“

She refuses to reciprocate the care that Beena provided her, essentially betraying her daughter-in-law.

This scene between Tabish and his mother avoids the simplistic idea that women are merely victims of patriarchy.

Instead, it shows how patriarchal systems can be reproduced by women — especially women in positions of power — who gain access to social capital (such as respect for mothers) by legitimising male authority instead of challenging it.

She can challenge the patriarchal logic guiding her son, but she chooses not to exercise that authority. She protects two things at once: his authority in the house as a man and her authority over him as a mother. Her silence in the face of a murder that partially rests on her permission is an abdication of moral responsibility.

At the end, Tabish asks his mother to let him commit the sin, even though she has not stopped him. Though Chaudhry has given Tabish the plan to commit the murder without consequences, Hafiz makes Tabish see his wife’s murder as a sin. Tabish, however, reframes it as a necessary sin. The husband who initially only wanted to punish his wife’s transgression via divorce starts believing her murder to be an inevitable sin that he must commit.

In two to three scenes in these episodes, Chaudhry and Tabish’s mother aid in Tabish’s transformation from toxic husband into wife murderer.

Beena eventually lives. But had she been killed, who would have been responsible for her murder? Tabish, because he made the decision to get her killed? Police officers, because they offered and executed the murder for him? Chaudhry, because he showed Tabish that killing his wife was the only way to restore his honour and repair his masculinity? Or Tabish’s mother, whom he never disobeys but who still chose not to tell him not to kill his wife?

A husband like Tabish may ultimately be the person who chooses to kill his wife. But that choice becomes possible only within a system that teaches him that he is completely entitled to the wife’s unconditional love and labour, that turns the wife’s disobedience into injury to his masculinity, that gives him the language through which he understands his hurt as dishonour and that establishes institutions that help avenge his injury at the cost of a woman’s life and show him that there is no accountability of the murder.

Saife Hasan, the show’s director, made this disclosure during an interview on Friday.

So, who, if not Hocane, was first considered for the lead role?

“There weren’t many options,” Hasan said, before pointing out that casting the role of Beena was particularly challenging.

The character appears in two different timelines, so the actress had to convincingly play both a mother of children aged 10 to 12 as well as a college girl.

“Not every actor could be offered this role. So, the big names we approached were Saba Qamar, Mahira Khan, and Sarah Khan. There was a time when we decided to cast Beena with two different actors; that’s when Reema’s name came up. We considered casting Reema for the older role,” he added.

In the end, Urwa got the role, the director said.

“Urwa worked very hard. I had no idea that Urwa was such a hard-working girl. She worked with so much determination. She always came up with good ideas. She did a good job,” Hasan said.

On the other hand, Tabish — Beena’s cheating husband in the drama — was always Ahsan Khan.

Considering the phenomenon that Aap Ki Izzat has become, it’s hard to imagine why any actor would turn down a role in the drama. Hasan feels it’s because people didn’t give the script enough time.

“The script is so thick, it’s like two dictionaries. And everyone is quite busy. But whoever read it — like Urwa — did a good thing. Urwa trusted me,” he added.

Casting decisions, Hasan made sure to point out, were mainly made by Momina Duraid, head of the production house behind the show.

Hasan also made several other disclosures during the interview — including the fact that Aap Ki Izzat was almost called Tumhari Beena because he wanted the title to be slightly more ‘romantic’.

He also noted that the show initially had 20 episodes, but by the time writer Umera Ahmed was done with it, it had increased to 22 episodes.

Good news if you’re an Aap Ki Izzat fan — with episode 17 having just aired, you still have five more to enjoy the cast’s stellar performances.

Songs of Forgotten Trees from Roy, just 28, picked up the best director prize in the secondary Horizons section of the festival in 2025 and she is back in the Italian city this week with a follow-up. But her joy at returning to one of the world’s most prestigious film events has been tempered by a decision from India’s powerful film board to block distribution of her first feature.

“A few days back, they called us and they said that it’s a ‘threat to society’. Can you believe that Songs of Forgotten Trees is a threat to society?” Roy said. “I am terribly upset about the censorship,” she said, adding: “I represented the country here, I won for the country.” Songs of Forgotten Trees is a tender story about friendship, featuring two migrant women who share an apartment in Mumbai, one a part-time sex worker, the other a call centre employee.

The film’s difficulties mirror those of the more overtly political Santosh, by British-Indian director Sandhya Suri, which won critical acclaim after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2024, only to fall foul of censors.

That movie shone a light on sexism, religious discrimination and corruption in the Indian police, as well as the treatment of lower-caste people.

Roy is back in Venice with her second film Lovers of the Blue Night, which also strays into sensitive territory, depicting Bangladeshi migrants struggling with poverty, grief and their sexuality in Mumbai, previously known as Bombay.

“My aim was to showcase a different Bombay because all the beautiful pictures (films) in Bombay have already been made,” Roy said ahead of the premiere on Friday.

It is competing for prizes in the Horizons section, which offers a platform for up-and-coming filmmakers. Winners will be announced on Saturday. Roy sees the space in India for independent filmmakers as being limited, partly due to the dominance of mass-market Bollywood fare in cinemas, as well as political pressure.

“It’s good for those who can praise the government and make a propaganda film. I am not somebody who can do that,” she said. She also worries that her statements in support of Palestinian rights might explain her problems with the film board.

Although censorship has a long history in the world’s biggest democracy, the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi is seen by rights groups and other critics as clamping down further since coming to power in 2014.

Roy is part of a new generation of female Indian directors that includes Payal Kapadia whose All We Imagine As Light in 2024 was another Cannes festival and international success story. Roy is largely self-taught, having learned the art of filmmaking from friends and mentors.

Originally published in Dawn, September 12th, 2026

From its very first broadcast episode on September 8, 1966, Star Trek established that its true subject was the exploration of humanity itself. For all its reputation as an action-packed space adventure, the franchise has endured because it repeatedly returned to a universal question: what does it mean to be human?

In that first episode, entitled ‘The Man Trap’, the alien antagonist survives by appearing to each observer as the person they most wish to see. Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy meets a lost love from his past, others see figures shaped by memory, expectation, desire and longing.

The creature, soon dubbed the “salt vampire” by fans of the series, is not simply a shape-shifter. Its power lies in exploiting human perception. Rather than asking viewers to fear an alien with superior strength or advanced weaponry, the episode asks a more profound question: can we trust our experience of reality?

Sixty years after its debut, Star Trek endures not because of its aliens and technology, but because of its fascination with what makes us human

Sixty years on, this question looks remarkably prescient. Modern neuroscience increasingly suggests that perception is not a passive recording of the external world. According to theories of predictive processing, the brain continually generates expectations and compares them with incoming sensory information.

The philosopher Andy Clark has described the brain as a “prediction machine.” Neuroscientist Anil Seth argues that our experience of reality can be understood as a form of “controlled hallucination”, generated by the brain but constrained by evidence from the senses.

Long before such ideas were articulated, ‘The Man Trap’ imagined a world in which people confront the same reality, but perceive it in profoundly different ways — based not only on what they see, but what they want to see.

This insight links the episode to a much older intellectual tradition. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s allegory of the cave imagined people mistaking shadows for reality, confusing appearance with truth.

The USS Enterprise crew’s first alien encounter offers a 20th century variation on the same theme. They actively participate in their own deception because the creature reflects their hopes, memories and desires.

This helps explain why ‘The Man Trap’ feels strikingly contemporary. In today’s world, shaped by algorithmically curated information, political polarisation and increasingly personalised media environments, disagreement is often less about opinions than competing versions of reality itself.

The nature of humanity

Star Trek’s memorable debut was not an isolated exploration of a philosophical problem. It was the beginning of a broader inquiry into the nature of humanity.

‘The Devil in the Dark’ (first aired March 1967) explores empathy and the challenge of understanding the unfamiliar. The apparently monstrous Horta is revealed to be an intelligent life form protecting its offspring, forcing viewers to reconsider assumptions about difference and otherness.

‘The Enemy Within’ (October 1966) shifts the inquiry inward, splitting Captain James T. Kirk into opposing aspects of his personality and challenging the assumption that human beings can divide their virtues from their vices.

The episode argues that the qualities that make Kirk an effective leader — courage, decisiveness and resolve — are inseparable from darker instincts, such as aggression and desire. Rather than presenting humanity as a triumph over these impulses, the episode suggests that human identity itself depends upon their integration.

‘The City on the Edge of Forever’(April 1967), regarded by many as the series’ masterpiece, shifts the focus to ethics. Kirk discovers that saving the woman he loves would alter history catastrophically, forcing him to choose between personal happiness and moral responsibility.

Together, these and many more of the 79 original Star Trek episodes form a remarkable investigation into human nature. The progression reveals a series less interested in strange new worlds than the human beings who encounter them.

Philosophical inquiry

While many science-fiction pro­g­r­ammes have aged with their technologies, Star Trek has endured because its deepest questions remain unresolved. We still debate perception, identity, empathy, consciousness and moral responsibility, because they are permanent features of human existence.

At its best, Star Trek engaged science fiction as a form of philosophical inquiry. Alien civilisations became thought experiments about prejudice and empathy. Time travel became a vehicle for exploring ethics. Artificial intelligence became a means of questioning consciousness and identity. The future it imagined served as a laboratory for understanding ourselves.

The closing moments of ‘The Man Trap’ illustrate this perfectly. Reflecting on the death of the salt vampire, Kirk recalls his conversation with the archaeologist Robert Crater, who has long been working on the planet, about the fate of the American bison — driven to the brink of extinction by humans.

This comparison transforms what might have been a conventional monster story into something morally complex. The creature is dangerous yet is also the last of its kind. Is it merely a predator, or the victim of a larger tragedy?

The episode, like many others, offers no simple answer. Crater views the creature from a perspective of compassion and preservation. Kirk simply sees an immediate threat to his crew. Both are responding to the same reality, yet they arrive at different conclusions.

The original Star Trek’s lasting legacy is not technological prophecy, but a sustained exploration of what it means to be human. Its enduring achievement lies not in predicting mobile phones, iPads or video calls, but in recognising that the most fascinating and vexing mystery remains humanity itself.

The final frontier, it suggests, lies not among the stars but within ourselves.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, September 6th, 2026

Directed by Francesco Carrozzini, Be Brave combines genuine interviews and archive footage with AI-generated video so convincing that viewers will likely struggle to realise many sequences are not real.

Concern over AI’s impact on creativity and jobs in the entertainment industry has loomed large over Venice, with several filmmakers and actors, including George Clooney, warning of the risks posed by the rapidly evolving technology.

Diesel risk taker

Be Brave producer Lorenzo Mieli acknowledged those concerns but said the industry needed to engage with AI rather than reject it outright.

“We need to regulate it, control it, prevent exploitation and prevent the disappearance of professions. But we also need to understand it very well,” he told reporters, adding that he hoped it would ultimately become just another artistic tool.

Rosso, who grew up in rural northeastern Italy, built Diesel from a small denim company into one of fashion’s most recognisable brands, establishing a reputation as a businessman who thrived on disruption and risk-taking.

“I’ve had a pretty crazy life. I’ve done some incredible things. (But) I wasn’t interested in making a film about my life, and I wasn’t interested in telling everyone how great or how cool I am,” Rosso said.

However, describing himself as a technology enthusiast, he said he embraced the idea for the documentary when he heard it would rely on AI.

“I thought, wow. This is me,” he said. “I like doing things before everybody else,” he added, recalling that he had been among the first Italian entrepreneurs to adopt tools such as fax machines and e-commerce.

Childhood brought to life

The film recreates periods of Rosso’s life for which no footage still exists, including scenes from his childhood.

“There were no images of me when I was little,” he said. “It brought tears to my eyes seeing myself as a child speaking.”

Carrozzini said AI had been used throughout the documentary, including scenes where the older Rosso had apparently appeared in flesh and bone. “Not a single frame of Renzo was filmed for this documentary,” he said.

However, interviews with the likes of fashion editor Anna Wintour and designer John Galliano are actual filmed conversations set against stylised or retouched backdrops.

Rosso rejected suggestions that the technology would eventually replace designers and artists.

“Creativity is absolutely not replaced by the machine,” he said. “Human beings remain fundamental.”

Be Brave is screening out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, which ends on Saturday.