The problems are everywhere yet nowhere in the rural, sand-encrusted fishing village where Rabia (Nazualiya Arsalan) lives. The surroundings stir quite a lot of questions in the mind of the 10-year-old contemplative girl whose school closed down without notice. Rumours of djinn taking over people and institutions spread with nonchalant normalcy, as if it’s an everyday occurrence. Nobody notices the apparentness of it all.

Oddly, Gul chooses to keep the various characters and family members nameless, addressed by Rabia only by their adopted professions or by their relationship to her.

The girls in her village are intelligent and docile, and the boys are easily incitable dumb barbarians (one was expecting this).

Writer-director-producer Seemab Gul’s Ghost School takes on an important issue but is a very long, tiring one-dimensional message board

The school teacher (Muhammad Zamaan) is nowhere to be found. When she tracks him down, the teacher and his wife are all but ready to leave for the city as small-town politics have become too much for the couple.

The school principal (Adnan Shah Tipu) — whom she also eventually tracks down — lives at the other end of the spectrum. He believes education to be a privilege for the rich. For him, Rabia, the daughter of a fisherman and a housemaid (played by Samina Seher), shouldn’t worry about learning. After all, he says, what would landlords do if all fishermen and farmers educated themselves and left for a better life?

Rabia leaves the principal’s house, sees an old well and screams like an adult who has had enough — not a child who wants to hear her echo. It’s a strange disconnect, but the realisation for the viewer is far from alarming. Rabia, for the most part, is an angry representation of the outside world, silently scowling at the injustices of politicians, bureaucrats and officers alike.

So, for most of Ghost School, Rabia walks, and walks, and walks, and walks (yes, there is a lot of walking), seeking answers that are everywhere for the audience to see. She notices half-completed buildings abandoned along the way — a hospital, a college, a school — left incomplete because state funds were looted. Schools that get state funding but hire no teachers are deemed “Ghost Schools” by institutions of developed countries, as Rabia, and the audience are told.

She meets a vegetable vendor (Kehan Naqvi) who is happy to have left school when he reached the fifth standard, and a blind old man (Tutu Baba) sitting in the shade, who goes gung-ho against politicians. At his barbershop, her uncle (Taha Khan), a sensible, educated young man, tells her not to prod and to return home with the local tonga driver (Vajdaan Shah) and his white steed Burraq. Rabia, instead, pays him to drop her at the district commissioner’s office.

At one point, Gul makes an appearance as the girl’s saviour. She gives Rabia a ride home in her car and offers her an education in Karachi. In exchange, the little girl has to take care of her house chores.

Everyone Rabia encounters speaks perfect Urdu, using words that spring right out of classic literature from my grand-dad’s youth; not one of them has a hint of Sindhi in their dialects. Every actor ‘acts’ as if they aren’t yet attuned to the subtleties of film acting, and delivers stilted dialogues with the aghastness of a first-world resident. The entire exercise makes Ghost School a very long, very tiring, decidedly vocal, one-dimensional message board, littered with sticky notes about how old-fangled and suffocating Pakistan really is.

For good measure, the film is shot with the arty and serious 3:2 squarish aspect ratio by Afghan-German cinematographer Zamarin Wahdat, accentuating the boxed-in lives these characters live.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for stories that have pluck, purpose and message, with the guts to stand against institutions, with due reason. The filmmaker took the Sindh censor board to court and won — and one can see why they had issues with the film. Notwithstanding the gutsiness, I am also a supporter of subtlety, impartiality, panache and pacing, especially when it comes to spinning narratives (panache and pacing are important on the technical front to keep the film engaging).

Here, the message lingers inelegantly, full of one-sided hubris, as if no other interpretation or viewpoint exists in this world. That conviction is wrapped around a brick that’s flung directly at the audience. And it smarts.

The last two films that hurled a brick like this were The Window by Kanza Zia and Ammar Lasani, and years ago, Iram Parveen Bilal’s Josh: Against the Grain. Both films found international applause at film festivals, but little audience in Pakistan. However, Parveen Bilal’s film had better dialogue delivery and less stilted performances.

In Gul’s film, despite the trained, theatrical performances of her cast — who often act on cue — the real gem is Nazualiya Arsalan. The little girl is a find whose naturalness somewhat eases the insistent nature of Ghost School.

Gul’s film carries an idea worth exploring — that, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission, the country has 30,000 ghost schools that deprive 22.4 million students of education. However, her script needs to go back to the drawing board, irrespective of international partnerships or grants.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, November 8th, 2026

A scene where the female lead Zaryab Habib (Durefishan Saleem) refuses to wear a sleeveless dress, saying she’s no longer comfortable wearing such clothes, has sparked a fair amount of discourse on social media and even Saleem has jumped in.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, the actor explained that the point of the scene was to show Zaryab’s own relationship with faith changing, and she should have the freedom to go through that change.

Saleem said she considered faith to be an internal transformation which manifests in external actions — including how someone chooses to dress themselves.

A woman’s right to choose how she dresses must be extended to all women in various clothing styles, the actor pointed out.

The real issue, Saleem said, is not what Zaryab chooses to wear; it was how people “begin questioning, scrutinising or judging her choices instead of simply respecting them”.

Dar-e-Nijaat, she said, was Zaryab’s story: “her imperfections, her flaws, her contradictions as a woman”. The actor said the audience was entitled to their opinion on it.

She did, however, question the need to blow a narrative choice out of proportion and make it a national emergency. “Not every character arc needs a panel discussion, a jury and a final verdict from the internet.”

“You don’t have to agree with Zaryab, you don’t have to relate to her, and you certainly don’t have to make her journey your own… Sometimes, it is simply someone else’s story.”

Unlike her character, she said, she was okay with wearing clothing without sleeves and had been for some time. “That’s my personal relationship with modesty and someone else’s may look very different to it,” Saleem said.

Her faith did not grant her the right to judge others, she said, nor did it give others the right to judge her. What she chooses to wear, be comfortable with and change about herself is her own business, she reiterated.

In a reel posted to her Instagram account on Saturday, the actor said she was thankful to her fans for all the love they’d given her character Hamna and as a reward, she was going to give them all the tea on what’s going to happen on the show.

The female lead, Zaryab (played by Durefishan Saleem), she claimed, will move to Turkey towards the end of the show, where she’ll meet — and you guys are not going to believe this — the historic Turkish leader Ertugrul, who is a cousin of her ex-boyfriend Zamil (Nameer Khan); therefore, Ertugrul would technically be Hamna’s brother-in-law, since she ends up married to Zamil.

The whole thing makes Zaryab’s husband, Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar), very upset and he becomes a motivational speaker, conducting a seminar titled ‘Lets Move On’ as a way to move on from his lost love. There, in the front row, he finds the last person anyone would expect to see there: Zamil — cue audible gasps.

And if you’re wondering what more could happen in this fever-dream of a TV show, Zamil tells Abu Bakar that his mother Khushbakht (Sania Saeed) is also Zamil’s mother, which makes them step-brothers?

Now, while Khan doesn’t say whether Abu Bakar reacts to this by yelling out “No! That’s not true! That’s impossible,” she does reveal what her own character does out of frustration with this relationship hodgepodge: she moves to Dubai and starts working in real estate.

Okay, Khan was obviously kidding and none of that happened. She asked fans if they thought she was crazy enough to give them the actual story and lose her job — which is actually a good question for all of you who read this far.

She told people to watch the show for themselves to find out what actually happens.

A deal would extend the media organisation’s push beyond its core news business, following acquisitions including sports site The Athletic, product-review service Wirecutter and the Wordle game. The company added 420,000 digital-only subscribers in the third quarter, bringing total paid subscribers to 13.8 million.

No agreement has been reached and the talks could still fall apart, the report said.

The price under consideration would value Letterboxd at more than 20 times its projected earnings this year of about $15 million, according to the newspaper.

Film studios A24 and Sony had been among prospective buyers but A24 later dropped out as price expectations increased, the report said.

The New York Times Company would integrate its advertising technology with Letterboxd’s systems, according to the report, which added that the film platform would likely continue operating as a standalone site for the foreseeable future.

The New York Times Company declined to comment, while Letterboxd did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

Letterboxd’s parent has been working with investment bank LionTree on a potential sale, the report said.

Letterboxd, launched in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, has grown rapidly since 2020, reaching 30m users, and is particularly popular among Gen Z film fans, who are more likely than other generations to visit cinemas, according to Statista, an online research website.

The Times Company and Letterboxd have discussed keeping Buchanan and von Randow in charge of the business, with the founders reporting to a Times Company executive, the report said.

Jennie will sing ‘Someone to Hold’ for the Netflix animation Steps, a first for the artist, according to her agency OA Entertainment on Friday.

“I had so much fun working on a track for an animated film for the first time,” she told via the agency, “I loved the warm hearts and personalities of each character, and was happy to be a small part of their world.”

The film, which twists the plot of Cinderella, will unveil on Nov 20 and the ballad on Nov 6.

Jisoo, meanwhile, co-authored and sang ‘Sun Showers’ for The Angry Birds Movie 3, which will hit theatres in December.

“I’ve always loved how the films bring together such colourful characters, humour and heart. With ‘Sun Showers,’ I wanted to capture the movie’s playful and bright energy through a fun, feel-good song that makes people want to smile and dance along,” the artist said in an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

This story was originally published on The Korea Herald, an ANN partner of Dawn

Now, five years into her acting career, she says social media is a boon for the entertainment industry because it brings forward young talent — like Dananeer Mobeen, who debuted alongside Ali in the drama Sinf-e-Ahan.

She spoke to Hasan Chaudhary on his show Buzz about how, with some people, the lines between influencer and actor “intermingle” if the person has talent.

“The biggest example I have… and I am so glad that social media brought her here, is Dananeer, right? Dananeer is very talented,” she said.

Ali said that if social media weren’t there “kids like us would have a hard time navigating [the industry] and getting where we are”. She said people who enter the television space get criticised if they can’t act and don’t belong where they are.

When Chaudhry brought up Romaisa Khan, another social media star who went into dramas, Ali said she was a “beautiful actor” and had an extensive range. “Her eyes, her… I don’t know, man. Social media has given us [stars like] them too,” she said.

Ali said there was nepotism in the industry, but that could only get someone so far. “You’ll get two projects, at max, maybe three, that too by talking to as many people. Then you’ll be gone.”

She also said that the industry was in need of fresh faces: “There are some actors you see on your screen 24/7. So, even if they are good, you’re still seeing them all the time.”

Earlier in the programme, Ali’s Izzat co-star Atabik Mohsin said the industry suffered from an “accessibility problem” where new entrants didn’t know where to go and what to do. “For example, I have no one in the industry, [so I didn’t know] where to go for auditions and whom to meet.”

Mohsin did, however, say that there was hope for those who really wanted to get in. “There is enough space in the industry that you can get work, just keep at it,” he advised young actors.

In an Instagram post on Friday, BDS said it was still encouraging a boycott of Disney products after Marvel chose to revive the pro-Israel comic book character Sabra in Captain America: Brave New World.

The movement called the character “racist” and “anti-Palestinian”, noting that the original version from 1980s comic books was an agent of the Mossad and that “Sabra has long glorified settler-colonial violence against Palestinians”.

The post from BDS also mentioned how the actor who played Sabra in the movie, Shira Haas, was not only Israeli, but also a former member of the Israeli military. In fact, Haas was exempted from mandatory military service on medical grounds, but chose to enlist in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) anyway.

The movement said Disney had suspended its operations in Russia when the country invaded neighbouring Ukraine in light of the “humanitarian crisis”, but continued to run a subsidiary and two TV channels in Israel three years after the country launched its brutal invasion of Palestine — which experts around the world have concluded is a genocide.

The post said the boycott call against Captain America: Brave New World and Snow White — which starred Israeli cultural ambassador Gal Gadot — led to both films being commercially unsuccessful and proved that BDS’ strategy of economic pressure can yield results.

The movement called for followers to stop buying Marvel merchandise and cancel their Disney+ subscriptions until Disney drops Sabra from its line-up of heroes.

This follows another boycott call from pro-Palestine activists against Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which was produced by former IDF member Avi Arad.

A Lebanese organisation aimed at placing economic pressure on Israel termed financially supporting projects associated with pro-Israel people — like Arad — as amounting to “cultural normalisation” and urged supporters not to pay to watch the movie.

And all that was achieved without Batman.

Directed by James Watkins, Clayface follows Matt Hagen, portrayed well by Tom Rhys Harries, a rising actor who finds himself horrifically attacked and disfigured. Hagen is left to grapple with not just his physical trauma, but also the loss of his identity and livelihood, for there is perhaps no industry more intimately familiar with the commercialisation of the human face. For an actor, such as our protagonist, there is no currency more valuable to him, nor any avenue with which to fulfil his dreams of cinema and acting glory, than that of his face. Thus, when his very means of self and livelihood are gruesomely taken away, he is willing to go to any means necessary to reclaim it, and enact revenge on those that inflicted this cruelty upon him in the first place.

Without giving too much away, it is a grotesque solution that seems perfectly aligned with the body horror of the whole film. However, the film’s central focus isn’t unfamiliar; it’s much like 2024’s horror darling The Substance. The similarities are palpable between the two protagonists who are abused by the corruption of Hollywood and turn to nefarious substances that “fix” their appearance to fit the industry standard, chipping away at their humanity in exchange.

In Clayface’s case, Hagen is an actor whose entire profession requires him to be looked at, the disfigurement a physical toll as well as a complete destruction of life and identity. His tragedy lies in the fact that recovering his appearance is synonymous with recovering his own selfhood, and while he is far from perfect, he is an extremely pitiable person.

Thus, the body horror has a unique layer of intentionality behind it where Hagen’s consistently horrifying transformations allow for dissection of character as well as spectacle. To lose what is one’s entire life, and then lose the humanity you had left trying to reclaim said life through reclaiming appearance is a difficult matter to explore. Even more difficult, perhaps, is the constant push and pull with whether the monster is Hagen’s own self, or the substance that corrupts him, body and soul.

Harries carries the burden of this disturbingly difficult portrayal, and yet he manages to suit the role to the point where I could not imagine any other performer successfully taking on the character, the dissolution of Hagen’s psyche and identity carried in a way impactful enough to leave a mark.

However, Clayface is a film that picks and chooses what to prioritise. The character study and dissection of Hagen, itself central to the film’s identity as a body horror piece, is quite well done and a surprisingly brave choice for what could have been a more generic bet in the superhero genre. Unfortunately, other story beats range from generic to disrespectfully rushed, particularly with the film’s first half, where the set-up seems to be rushed through in an attempt to get to “the good stuff”. And as much as Naiomi Ackie is a standout actor, her character stands as understandably vital, but underdone.

All in all, however, Clayface is a worthy watch. It is at its most compelling when it fully leans into the themes and genres it actually intends to explore. Sometimes, the grotesque is simply what a man looks like when pushed to his absolute limits.

Its thematic ambitions occasionally reach beyond the quality of the narrative, with a specific court case plot point I will not get into (but did not enjoy — seriously, it took up precious screen time and only added more plot holes as the film went on) but there is something worthwhile in a superhero studio choosing to make a monster’s origin story an examination of identity, disposability, and the ups and downs of commercialising being seen.

Any fan of horror or any non-squeamish fan of DC should give it a watch.

That’s right, Netflix is working on a live-action series based on PUBG — and no, we have no idea how a game without even the semblance of a plot can be made into a TV show.

Donald Glover, the actor known for his work on Community, 30 Rock and the satirical 2016 rap song ‘This Is America’, is reported as the star of the show. His brother Stephen will write and executive produce.

PUBG, which was first released in 2017, is an online, multiplayer game where each match consists of 100 players being dropped into an arena and having to fight each other in a battle royale format — the last player standing is declared the winner.

The game enjoys widespread popularity in Pakistan and has been brought under the microscope more than once over its overtly violent gameplay and the negative effects that may have on its — mostly young — audience.

The game made headlines again last month after Pakistan’s five-man national team won a bronze medal in e-sports at the Asian Games in Japan.

Should the project go ahead, it would be part of a line of video game adaptations in the works at Netflix, including a show based on the Assassin’s Creed franchise and a movie based on Gears of War.

The streaming platform is said to be working on animated series based on Minecraft and Clash of Clans, while cartoons based on Cyberpunk and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell are already part of its catalogue.

“One day, Jane, I shall be either a governess and a spinster, or a wife and a mother. And then finally, we may talk about something else,” Lizzie tells Freya Mavor’s Jane Bennet on a rooftop as they appear to be talking about their futures.

The tailer then introduces us to the ever-tiresome Mrs Bennet (Olivia Colman) and the ever-detached Mr Bennet (Rufus Sewell) and offers quick looks at Louis Partridge’s Wickham, Jamie Demetriou’s Mr Collins, and Fiona Shaw’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

In the trailer Colman delivers the enduring opening sentence of the classic novel: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

It also looks like we’re in for yet another famous ‘lake moment’, as we see Elizabeth quietly observing Mr Darcy — with rolled-up sleeves — skipping stones on a lake. But it still remains to be seen, of course, if it’s going to be as iconic as the one from the 1995 series starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.

The trailer ends with Mrs Bennet asking why her husband — who says nothing the whole time — must make everything “so dramatic”.

Pride and Prejudice premieres on Netflix on December 3.

In an interview with Haroon Rashid on the BBC Asian Network, Munawar said his character had some major flaws, including being a people-pleaser.

Explaining his character’s shortcoming, Munawar said he himself was a people-pleaser and had a hard time saying no to others. He also said Abu Bakar had a saviour complex “because the mother’s brought him up in a certain way, where she’s always ingrained in him that this is the right thing to do”.

He asked Rashid to “imagine the pressure this man lives under”.

The actor dropped another bombshell during the interview: Abu Bakar had been crushing on Zaryab for a lot longer than he outwardly lets on — or at least that’s how he played the part.

Munawar revealed to a shocked host that his character had had his eye on the show’s female lead from very early on, when he’d visit her house with his mother and had probably been “sneaking a few looks here and there”.

He said the clash between Zaryab and Abu Bakar’s personalities left him in a dilemma between what his heart wanted and what his mind knew was dangerous.

The actor also said he’d been leaving hints about Abu Bakar’s crush for fans to pick up on: “The first time they go out for lunch and he tells her, you like pasta, right? And she says, how do you know? He says, ‘Kishwar khala had mentioned it once.’ Why would I remember if I didn’t like this girl? I’ve thrown these hints everywhere.”

Abu Bakar has been the talk of the town ever since the show started, with his nice — some would say too nice — guy image being put under the microscope. Earlier, Nadia Afgan responded to naysayers who said Abu Bakar was too good to be true, saying her own husband was a bit like the character, so she found Abu Bakar’s actions fully believable.

Even the show’s writer, Umera Ahmed, weighed into the discourse, asking why her followers felt “basic human traits like kindness, empathy, forgiveness [and] overlooking others’ flaws are [going] extinct from our society” and why, when they are portrayed in the media, people find them unreal.

The gap, he believes, is one of compatibility rather than quality.

The producer and actor made his thoughts known during an interview with Ali Salman published on Monday.

“Look, our dramas have a unique style of their own. [Our] writing has a style of its own. When we deliver lines, there’s a particular way to do it because we’re speaking in Urdu. Over-the-top is edgy, different content; we’re not really good at that,” Saeed said, before adding while there are some people in the Pakistani industry who can tell OTT stories, there aren’t any suitable platforms for them.

As the conversation inevitably moved towards Netflix, Saeed acknowledged that political reasons may play a role in Pakistan’s notable absence from it, though he did not elaborate on that line of thought.

Saeed said the local industry should prioritise the creation of its own OTT platform, which can help attract the attention of streaming giants like Netflix.

“Even in India, [domestic] OTT platforms came first. They’ve been developing for the past 12 to 13 years,” he said, before adding the Pakistani government should take steps to “talk to Netflix” for a resolution.

Saeed is one of many celebrities who have weighed in on the subject. Just last week, Urwa Hocane stated that Pakistan doesn’t need to obsess over Netflix because “we’re doing better than that”. Faysal Quraishi, Shamoon Abbasi, and Usama Khan have all offered different opinions on the matter, with the majority agreeing on the part about Pakistani dramas’ potential to attract large audiences.

Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal also announced in July that the government was “in talks with Netflix and other global streaming giants to adjust the regional framework”.

In all seriousness, this adaptation of one of the most popular — if not the most popular — beat-em-up video games of all time takes pride and joy in its unseriousness.

I mean, take a gander at the story: in 1993, Chun-Li (Callina Liang), a secret Interpol agent, recruits Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), along with master fighters Dhalsim (Vidyut Jammwal, excellent) and Guile (Cody Rhodes), to enter the World Warrior tournament in Metrolao City in the fictional country of Shadaloo — a dictatorship run by the power-hungry M. Bison (David Dastmalchian).

The roll call of contenders includes popular characters E. Honda (actor and professional wrestler Hirooki Goto), Zangief (Olivier Richter), Balrog (50 Cent) and Vega (Orville Peck)… while Cammy (Mel Jarnson) and Juli (Rayna Vallandingham) serve as Bison’s unhinged officers. The villain’s master plan is to siphon power from the world’s best fighters to augment his own ‘Psycho Power’, which fuels his power moves.

This campy, kooky adaptation of the iconic video game Street Fighter embraces its outlandish fighting moves, colourful characters and anime influences, even if its villain fails to inspire dread

The entire tournament, though, is a ruse to lure Ryu, the winner of the last tournament in 1987, who disappeared off the face of the Earth after defeating Sagat. In the fight, Ryu lost control of his own restraint, unleashing his dark side, which ultimately brought forth the fabled power-mad villain Akuma (Joe Anoa’i, aka Roman Reigns, the WWE wrestler). Akuma wants Ryu to lose power once again so that he can beat a worthy rival in combat. When Ryu chooses restraint, Akuma kills his teacher, Gouken (Don Lee).

The death fractures the relationship between Ryu and Ken, who were raised as brothers by Gouken. Chun-Li, meanwhile, wants revenge because Bison killed her father. All that’s left to say is: Round One, Fight — Hadouken! (For the uninitiated, Hadouken is the game’s signature power move.)

Story writers Dalan Musson and Gary Dauberman, along with screenwriters T.J. Fixman and Kitao Sakurai (who also directs), have reverence for the material. It is quite cool that the production happily trades reality for faithfulness.

For once, the fighting moves — including the Whirlwind Kick, Shoryuken (Dragon Punch), Hadouken (the blue fireball), Dhalsim’s elongated limbs and E. Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap — look as they do in the video games. Unlike other adaptations, which save a big fighting move for a crucial, climactic finish, here every fighter unleashes their real-world-defying special attacks as if they come naturally in this reality.

Fans will be pleased not just by the moves but by the costumes, sets, cars, props, background score, and minor video-game characters in good supporting roles (two in particular are Jason Momoa as Blanka and Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki, an admirer of Ryu and Ken from the games).

There’s also an absolute indebtedness to the 1994 anime feature film Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie which, to this day, continues to be a benchmark for all serious beat-’em-up game-to-film adaptations.

In fact, the flashbacks in this movie are animated in an anime style; these sequences strengthen the film’s connection to the wider world of Street Fighter, including its anime and cartoon projects.

While the 1994 anime movie took pride in its seriousness, this film also takes inspiration from another Street Fighter release in 1994: the live-action Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, Ming-Na Wen as Chun-Li, and the late Raúl Juliá as M. Bison (Juliá died before the film’s release). At times, one wishes it hadn’t.

Dastmalchian, a fine character actor who has been in Dune, Prisoners, The Dark Knight, and Oppenheimer, feels as caricaturish and ill-fitting as Juliá was; the latter too was a celebrated actor best known for his roles in Kiss of the Spider-Woman and the two Addams Family movies in the 1990s. No matter the campiness of the enterprise, the villain, at least, should inspire dread.

That is, in my opinion, the biggest turn-off in an otherwise fine, compact, kooky action-comedy spectacle whose narrative stakes never rise above video-game level. Don’t expect excellence; settle for an entertaining two hours — minus a hasty last 20 minutes — and you’ll be fine.

Released internationally by Paramount and HKC Entertainment in Pakistan, Street Fighter is rated U, and is suitable for all audiences… provided they are fans of ‘Hadoukens’.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

The actor took to Instagram on Sunday to share his shock over how some people offer their reviews without even watching the movie and sometimes, when it’s an orchestrated effort by more than one person, they even use the same words.

Even though Quraishi didn’t name any movie in his video, his comments come a few days after he and Hareem Farooq raised the alarm over alleged paid negative reviews of their new Punjabi comedy Mango Jutt.

Both the actors shared screenshots on Instagram over the weekend of a conversation claiming that paid campaigns have been initiated to spread negativity about Mango Jutt, which Farooq also produced.

Doubling down on his concerns in his Instagram video, Quraishi spoke about how Pakistani cinema, already battling shrinking audiences and limited screens, can’t afford controversies fuelled by manufactured outrage.

“Because it is a negative thing, which has been fed [to them], you’re saying the same thing. But seriously, while focused on your gains, how many people are you harming?” he asked.

“Whether the film is good or bad is a separate discussion. I know a lot of such serious film critics who wait for two to three days, for Friday, Saturday and Sunday to pass, before writing a review. But when there’s paid propaganda, the reviews start pouring in from the next day,” he added.

Quraishi said nobody but the audience has the right to make a movie a hit or a flop.

“Every film receives mixed reviews. Some of the biggest films in the world don’t get liked by a lot of people. And then there are very strange films, which people like a lot,” he said, before adding that it all depends on how people have perceived the film.

“So the thing is, paid propaganda against anything, whether it’s a drama or a film, it causes loss to the industry. We [already] have a very small industry,” he said.

Quraishi also pointed out how paid negative reviews also decrease trust among moviegoers, who already have to shell out a lot of money to watch films. The actor ended his video with a warning.

“It was very painful for me. But one thing is true, what you’re dishing out to people today, one day you will get a taste of it yourself. Remember this,” he said.

This was stated by Senior Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb while presiding over the maiden meeting of the Punjab Film Authority in Lahore.

The proposed royalty law for the film industry will be presented at the next meeting of the authority, Ms Aurangzeb was quoted as saying in a press release on Sunday.

The rebate for the films made in Punjab will be 35pc for the Punjabi and 20pc for the Urdu films, it said.

The rebate policy is expected to provide financial support to filmmakers, encourage quality film production and attract investment to the industry.

The meeting also decided to introduce an online one-window facility to help filmmakers identify suitable shooting locations.

Other key decisions aimed at reviving the film industry, promoting modern filmmaking and restoring Lahore’s position as a centre of the country’s film industry were also taken at the meeting.

Being dubbed as the biggest-ever provincial intervention to revive the cinematic heritage and establish it as a hub of film, drama, culture and tourism, a Film City is also set to be inaugurated on December 15 in Lahore.

The proposed Film City will feature a film and music school, a film museum, a film trading house, a post-production facility, a studio complex, state-of-the-art film studios and Pakistan’s largest convention centre.

The Film City Authority’s budget of over Rs589 million for the financial year 2026-27 was referred to the financing committee for review.

Approval was granted to recruit 26 employees for the film authority in the first phase against 53 sanctioned posts. The authority’s board will have the power to make appointments and dismissals.

The meeting also reviewed progress on the establishment of six committees, including the Punjab Film Fund Committee.

It also approved measures for the restoration of old cinemas, installation of solar systems and provision of affordable entertainment facilities to the public. The meeting decided to introduce an online booking system for cinemas.

A training programme was also approved to enhance the skills of young filmmakers, with international experts to provide training in modern filmmaking techniques.

Ms Aurangzeb said the chief minister wanted Punjab to become a global-standard screen tourism destination within five years.

She said Punjab’s unique culture and heritage would be showcased to the world through the camera lens.

“Film City will be a complete ecosystem for reviving the local film industry, attracting investment, creating employment opportunities and providing quality and affordable entertainment to the public,” she said.

Originally published in Dawn, October 26th, 2026

In fact, Faiq told Images it’s the “only film that has qualified for the Oscars from Tasveer”.

Explaining the context behind the idea of being long-listed, Faiq said, “Out of thousands of short films, only, I think, 200 qualify.”

He said that next year, they will be in the race for the Oscars. “We’re in the process of getting an Oscar[-nominated] actor on board as an executive producer, who will be representing us next year [at] the Oscars,” Faiq said, before clarifying “this is not a nomination, but we’ve qualified” by winning the prize at Tasveer.

The plot of The Last Glance follows a family fleeing their village in the dead of the night to escape violence. The film stars Adnan Shah Tipu, Areej Ayub and Fahad Hashmi, among others. It’s written, produced and directed by Faiq, with Umer Peerzada serving as producer and Khalid Saeed Khan as executive producer. Mike McNamara and Armeena Rana Khan are co-producers.

Being long-listed for the Academy Awards is but one of many wins for the film. It also recently took home the Best International Short Film award at the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival in Canada.

On Thursday, in an Instagram story, Faiq announced “The Last Glance has been selected as one of only eight finalists, chosen from films representing more than 50 Asian countries, for the short film program at the Asian World Film Festival in Los Angeles.”

For Pakistani audiences, every single win matters. Local filmmakers push against all odds and compete with the best in the world. Faiq has done exactly this.

While the Oscar race is long and nothing is guaranteed, the fact that a Pakistani short film is now on the longlist is definitely worth celebrating.

Photos provided by Kamran Faiq

More than 10,000 screenings of the sci-fi thriller Sanxingdui: Future Past are scheduled for Friday, according to ticketing platform Maoyan.

Public reception, however, has been less than enthusiastic.

Presale revenue as of Friday morning stood at 80,000 yuan ($11,980), while total box-office takings were forecast to remain below 150,000 yuan, only a fraction of the reported production cost, according to Maoyan.

Ticket prices range from 20 to 90 yuan, bringing the number sold to a few thousand at most.

Jiang Defu, CEO of the production company Bona Film Group, acknowledged the lukewarm reception in a recent interview but said the film was pushing boundaries.

“We are the first to try it, the first to get a theatrical release permit, and the first to be tested by the audience,” he told Chinese film industry outlet Yuli.

“I think that is not easy at all.”

Nearly 100 people took more than two years to make the film, which cost more than 10 million yuan ($1.5 million), Bona said, although all the actors, their voices and the backdrops are AI-generated.

The film touches on the theme of humanity in a future shaped by AI.

But that was not enough to convince Iris Yang, who attended a free preview screening of the film on Thursday for acquaintances of the production team and industry workers.

Yang said she would not have paid for a ticket, given the movie’s quality.

“If AI generation can match the theatrical experience of Avatar, I think I would be willing to pay for it,” she said, referring to the US franchise known for the quality of its animation.

AI-generated video has gained popularity in the world’s second-largest economy. On Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, AI-generated short dramas garnered more than 200 billion views in September alone.

But “the audience won’t automatically pay for the tickets just because it’s an AI-generated film”, independent AI director Zhang Jun told AFP.

Online, Chinese social media users also seemed unconvinced by the launch of AI movies in cinemas.

“If it’s free to watch on streaming platforms, it could become legendary. But paying to watch? People are not going to accept it at this stage,” one user on Weibo commented.

In Hollywood, the rise of AI has sparked concern among film workers about the prospect of job losses.

An AI-generated sci-fi feature called Gods Don’t Give Gifts is scheduled for US release on December 4.

And a virtual Hollywood actor called Tilly Norwood, whose interviews have gone viral while fuelling job fears, is also set to star in an upcoming movie called Misaligned.

A two-judge constitutional bench headed by Justice Yousuf Ali Sayeed also overturned an earlier decision of the board to remove various expressions and scenes from the film.

British-Pakistani filmmaker Seemab Gul and one of the associate producers Muhammad Yousuf Rehman, through their counsel Moiz Baig and others, have petitioned the SHC impugning the decision of the board.

The counsel submitted that Ghost School was a fictional narrative of a 10-year-old girl discovering that the only school in her village has closed owing to rumours of its being haunted.

They argued that the Sindh Board of Film Censors had subjected the film to eight excisions for the purpose of a certificate for public exhibition under the Universal (U) category as per the Sindh Motion Pictures Act 2011 read with the Sindh Censorship of Film Rules 2014.

They submitted that the film had been cleared for unrestricted exhibition without any excision by the Central Board of Film Censors and Punjab Board of Film Censors, but the Sindh board had declined certification.

In August, the SHC had ordered the board to decide the matter afresh strictly in accordance with relevant law and rules after providing petitioners a meaningful opportunity of hearing.

However, they maintained that as per the decision of the board communicated to the petitioners on Sept 11, they were directed to delete the expressions Biradri ka wadera, Wadera, Kameene, Haram khor and Manhoos siyasatdan wherever they appeared as well as a child’s abusive remark in the school and book and school burning scenes in the closing sequence.

In its order, the bench noted: “A term of social description such as “wadera”, a mild political epithet, mildly abusive words such as “kameene” or “haram khor”, and the depiction of a school’s burning in a film condemning such acts, do not all stand on the same footing and no single unexplained direction can justify them all.”

The bench further said that in its earlier order, the SHC had directed the board to record cogent and intelligible reasons for whatever conclusion it reached, but neither the decision in question nor respondents’ comments reflected anything of the sort and in the absence of any stated ground, the excisions, other than the one pertaining to the child’s abusive remarks, cannot stand.

The court directed the board to reconsider within 10 days the certification of the film and either issue a certificate sanctioning the film for unrestricted public exhibition without requiring any further excision.

It said if the “board is of the view that retaining any one or more of the other identified excisions warrants the film being awarded a certification in a category higher than U, shall afford the petitioners a personal hearing and pass a speaking order relating to its specific concern in each instance”.

Originally published in Dawn, October 21st, 2026

“It’s official, Glee is returning,” the platforms said in a joint Instagram post, though they provided no additional details ​about the project or its release timeline.

The ​reboot revives Ryan Murphy’s television series, which premiered ⁠on Fox in 2009 and ran for six seasons ​through 2015. Set in Lima, Ohio, the show followed ​members of a high school glee club as they navigated adolescence, friendships and personal challenges.

The series featured a cast that ​combined established actors and emerging talent, including Lea Michele, ​Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch and Darren Criss.

Glee became a cultural ⁠phenomenon, earning Golden Globe awards for best television series, comedy or musical, in 2010 and 2011. The show was known for its wide-ranging musical performances, covering ​songs such as ​Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop ⁠Believin,’’ Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ and Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ while also popularising mash-up numbers that ​blended multiple songs into a single performance.

The ​series ⁠has also been associated with the deaths of three cast members: Cory Monteith, who played Finn Hudson, died in ⁠2013; ​Mark Salling, who portrayed Noah ​Puckerman, died in 2018; and Naya Rivera, who played Santana Lopez, died ​in 2020.

It was midday, some hours before the filmmaker would step onto stage to close the latest session of her Patakha Pictures fellowship and mark five years since she started the initiative to empower young female filmmakers.

Naturally, I asked Obaid-Chinoy to start from the very beginning and tell me what led her to start the fellowship in the first place. She said the idea was to give young Pakistani women who have stories to tell “an opportunity for them to be able to craft films and tell those stories”.

She recalled being a young filmmaker herself and said what set her apart from other women of her time who wanted to make films was that she had opportunities outside Pakistan, which was in turn because she had funding and mentorship available to her.

Obaid-Chinoy said young women in the next generation often didn’t have access to those opportunities and she wanted to bridge that gap with the Patakha Pictures fellowship.

Until recently, she said, Pakistan did not have film funds. So, when she started Patakha Pictures, young filmmakers had nobody to go to for support in making their first film.

“If you have an idea and you want to make your first film, who will give you the funding to do that? That’s where Patakha Pictures stepped in,” Obaid-Chinoy said. “We felt that there was a void, and ours is just a very small sort of contribution to the filmmaking ecosphere, but we think it’s an important one.”

I asked the Oscar-winner what it took for someone to get selected for the programme and she said she was looking for young women who had access to a story and were committed to telling it. They didn’t need to be professional filmmakers — that was for the mentors to help with — just passionate about their stories.

Those mentors, she said, were a “rotating cast” of experts from around the world, some even Patakha Pictures alumni, who would assist participants “at each step of the way” in their three- to six-month fellowship.

I asked the filmmaker about the ethnic diversity I’d seen in previous cohorts of the programmes and she said, “It is extremely deliberate on our part to be geographically diverse, to be economically diverse and to be able to give women an opportunity where they haven’t had an opportunity.”

Elaborating on the inequality of opportunity, she said there was a stark difference between someone who grew up in Karachi and someone who grew up in Shimshal, for example. “We cannot judge them as apples to apples. We have to judge them as apples to oranges.”

She said one of the things she was most proud of was that “young women are feeling that they have the confidence to tell the stories they want to tell [and] they’re coming from places you wouldn’t expect to see filmmakers emerge from”.

The filmmaker gave me some numbers to better illustrate how far Patakha Pictures had come in five years. “We’ve funded over 75 filmmakers. Their films have played in over 100 festivals around the world and they have won over 22 awards.”

Obaid-Chinoy said she wished she could “fund 50 filmmakers a year” with the fellowship, but funds were limited. So limited, in fact, that she did not think the programme would make it this far — and that’s in spite of the fact that a lot of the funds come from her own production house, SOC Pictures.

Talking about the most recent cohort, which would have its grand closing ceremony later, the filmmaker said they had four films this year, ranging in topics from a midwife helping deliver babies in the remote Shimshal Valley to another on a “badass woman” who competes in the male-dominated game of tent pegging.

Obaid-Chinoy said she has plans to establish a Patakha House in Karachi under the Patakha Pictures banner in the next five years. She described it as “a space for filmmakers to come, congregate, watch films, get funding [and] get mentorship”.

But that’s just the next five years; she was hopeful it would continue to make an impact well past that point. She said Patakha Pictures was extremely special to her because she hopes the filmmakers she mentors today will continue to tell Pakistan’s stories, “long after I’m gone, and long after our footprints are gone”.

Cover photo: SOC Films

If you find this relatable, you’re likely filmmaker Sarmad Khoosat, the artwork is popular TV drama Humsafar and you’ve been denied royalties from its release in Spanish.

In an Instagram story on Tuesday, the director shared a post from HUM TV saying the show was set to be dubbed and released in Spanish. Above the post, the filmmaker had written “If only there were royalties” with a blank-faced emoji.

Royalties, which are standard practice in foreign markets, are payments given to actors, directors, producers and other members of a TV show or film’s team every time it gets a re-run or is re-released. The payments are often diminishing, with each subsequent re-run bringing in less until a minimum is reached, after which all future re-runs earn the artist the minimum amount.

Pakistan used to have a system of royalties for television actors, but it was scrapped in the 1990s when leading actors of the time chose to trade them in for a pay raise from state broadcaster PTV.

Speaking to DAWN in 2021, many veterans of the era said they regretted letting go of the right to collect royalties from PTV, which set the precedent private channels continue to follow.

Mahira Khan, who starred in Humsafar, spoke about royalties in March during promotions for her film Aag Lagay Basti Main. She said that while big names like herself and costar Fahad Mustafa were able to survive without royalties, the same could not be said for many junior artists and other workers on set.

The issue of royalties gained national attention in 2021, when late actor Naila Jaffery brought the conversation into public view under deeply personal circumstances. While battling cancer, she spoke about her financial struggles, noting that consistent royalty payments could have eased the burden of her medical expenses.

The actor, who recently received widespread praise for her role as Beena, made the comments during an appearance on Gloss Etc by Maliha Rehman.

Hocane said a lot of reviewers, while meaning well, often use the adjective “Netflix-quality” to describe a good project.

“I find that so lame. We’re doing better than that. It’s just because there was a portal or an app that just came out and it worked for a couple of years,” she said, adding she doesn’t think Netflix knows “what they’re doing anymore”.

“The stories that we’re telling and the quality that we’re showing, we don’t need no Netflix and why are we comparing ourselves to that anyway?” Hocane continued.

The actor said the Pakistani drama industry doesn’t prioritise “glam” over the story, which, she believes, is “the soul” of a project.

“We’re really narrating stories and then we’re like let’s commercialise it. That’s a cherry on top,” she added.

Citing Aap Ki Izzat as an example, Hocane said Pakistani dramas attract audiences without any pomp.

Hocane’s comments are the latest addition to a discourse that has been simmering across the industry for a while, with celebrities such as Faysal Quraishi, Shamoon Abbasi, and Usama Khan — all offering a wide range of opinions.

In July, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal also announced that the government was “in talks with Netflix and other global streaming giants to adjust the regional framework”.

Cover: Muhammad Azeem Sani for Dawn

Dedicated to supporting the next generation of documentary storytellers in Pakistan, Patakha Pictures so far has supported 76 emerging filmmakers, whose work has collectively received more than 22 awards and screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide.

This year, eight women filmmakers from Punjab, Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan made four creative pairs, whose documentaries explore women breaking barriers in traditionally male spaces, climate change and child marriage, survival and artistic tradition in Cholistan and generations of women providing healthcare in one of Pakistan’s most remote valleys.

The five-month training and mentorship programme saw the fellows receiving production funding, weekly online mentorship, an intensive in-person edit week in Karachi along with specialised workshops spanning storytelling, camera techniques, editing and other practical aspects of documentary filmmaking.

Returning for the fifth time as an international mentor was acclaimed documentary filmmaker and Scottish Documentary Institute founder Noe Mendelle, joined by filmmaker and cinematographer Nadir Siddiqui, nonfiction and animation producer Huma Murad Shah, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Maryam Ishani Thompson, Edit Mentor Husain Qaizar and sound engineer and producer Sameer Khan, bringing expertise across cinematography, documentary production and ethics, journalism and sound design.

While speaking on the occasion, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy said that five years of Patakha Pictures have reaffirmed a fundamental belief that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. “Together with the British Council Pakistan and the Scottish Documentary Institute, we have seen how access to funding, mentorship and creative freedom can transform the journeys of women filmmakers,” she said.

“Through successive cycles, Patakha Pictures fellows have received funding, international mentorship, practical filmmaking support and opportunities to develop stories rooted in their own communities,” she said.

“You are not the beneficiaries of this programme. You are for whom this programme exists. At the beginning of my career, there were many people who have held my hand to help me find my way. Now we are here to hold the hands of the next generation,” she smiled before calling to the stage to introduce this year’s filmmakers and their documentaries.

The first pair, Shagufta Rasool and Munira Shah, from Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, respectively, have made the documentary titled Koh-i-Firishtayesht, which traces the legacy of Lal Pari, a retired healthcare worker and midwife who spent decades reaching women across the remote Shimshal Valley.

The second pair, Kinza Waqar and Jazaba Raheel, from Bahawalpur and Lahore, respectively, have made the documentary D’aat, which follows the story of a camel barber, Bakht Ali, who makes beautiful designs with his scissors and razor on the camels’ coats in the Cholistan desert.

Next, there was a documentary Monsoon Brides, which tackles a very sensitive subject of the relationship between climate change, poverty and child marriage in rural Sindh by filmmakers and journalists Aleezeh Fatima and Aisha Manzoor of Karachi.

“It was an eye-opening and humbling experience to approach the story with sensitivity,” said Aleezeh about the film.

The fourth pair of Ishma Areeb and Javaria Waseem from Lahore have made the documentary titled The Horses Know Her Name, which explores the story of Anum Shakoor, a woman who found strength and healing through horses before entering the overwhelmingly male world of tent pegging.

Earlier, British Council Pakistan’s Arts Director, Laila Jamil, said that Sharmeen’s tenacity and vision bring the British Council and SOC Films to work together again and again across multiple art forms. “That’s how emerging filmmakers are supported, mentored and funded to ignite the firecracker that we know as Patakha Pictures,” she concluded.

Originally published in Dawn, October 20th, 2026

Some movies waste your time; others steal your soul, hold it for two hours, and hand it back slightly bruised. Produced by Hameem Productions, Mango Jutt does not tell a story. Instead, it dares you to look away.

An aam plot

Murad Jutt (played by Faysal Quraishi) is a police officer who has not taken a day off until he receives a call from his sister, Mariam (Ayesha Jahanzeb), in Lahore. She breaks the news of her husband’s passing and asks her brother to babysit her three children while she travels to Dubai for work in a few days.

While Murad is in Lahore, his boss (Aijaz Aslam) asks him to track down a major criminal with several cases against him. The catch is that Murad must go undercover. He becomes an aam aadmi (common man), or, as he puts it, an “aam Jutt”, hence the name of the movie, Mango Jutt.

The school is informed of Mariam’s trip, and the principal, Noor Jehan (Hareem Farooq), is asked to keep an eye on the children’s work and behaviour. Noor also happens to be Mariam’s friend. As Murad picks up and drops off the children at school, the two leads spark a typically Punjabi romance.

Meanwhile, Mariam’s late husband’s business partner is plotting to take over the entire business and planning to kidnap the children for ransom. With action, dance, drama and romance all lined up, the film checks the familiar boxes. The problem is that checking boxes does not automatically make a story work.

I went in with my friend with zero expectations. As we sat through the film, she whispered, “Wait for the Punjabi climax song.” Ten minutes later, we were watching Farooq and Quraishi dancing to ‘Ankhan Wich’. Then she whispered that the villain would enter. Of course, he came. Then she whispered that there would be a fight sequence. Of course, there was one.

What I mean to say is that it was a predictable film.

Songs, loose ends and unnecessary lectures

The movie is punctuated with music at random. For instance, ‘Ankhan Wich’ begins at a mela, which I could not figure out how or why had begun because there was no occasion for it. The film also carries side tales that did not need to be there. There is no clear beginning or end to how the kidnapper discovers that Murad is working undercover, leaving an important plot point hanging.

Then there are the randomly placed dialogues that do little to further the storyline. The unnecessarily preachy speech the eldest daughter delivers at the end, glorifying her mother and mamu, is one example. Another is the scene in which the film tries to prove its Punjabiat through a mother complaining that a child speaks Punjabi and sings in the same language at the elite school. It is unnecessary, adds nothing to the plot and feels particularly misplaced in a story that is already rather haphazard.

On the technical side, the dubbing could have been done better, too.

Shamoon Abbsi, Quraishi and Farooq are all fantastic actors and their mastery of their craft shines through individually. Quraishi and Farooq have the chemistry and screen presence to carry a film. Yet, even their stardom could not save Mango Jutt when the story itself had so little to offer.

Entertainment for the masses

Mango Jutt may be neither the best Punjabi film I have watched nor the funniest film of all time. What it is, however, is a film made for the entertainment of the masses.

Perhaps the film misses the need for single-screen cinemas, where a familiar plot, a few songs, some romance and a fight sequence can make for a good evening out. But there is a difference between making an accessible film and assuming that a predictable collection of scenes will be enough. The audience can see the villain coming, anticipate the fight and guess when the song will begin. What it cannot do is supply the story the film has failed to tell.

Mango Jutt has actors who can act, a romance that could have worked and all the ingredients of a crowd pleaser — it simply needed a tighter script to bring them together. Sometimes, even a passable movie needs to do more than show up with all the expected ingredients.

Final verdict: 3/10

The actor went through an emergency outfit crisis, which she described in colourful detail in an Instagram post on Sunday.

Farooq wrote about how she spent an entire week planning for the big day, including preparations for what she was supposed to wear — and that’s where things went wrong.

“A premiere to remember. A night of lessons, resilience & surrender,” she wrote.

“We’d spent a week planning every detail: clothes, jewellery, makeup, photography. Everything was ready for Thursday at 7pm… until 5pm, when an issue with my outfit meant I couldn’t wear it! Two hours to go. No backup. All hell broke loose,” the actor added.

It was in this moment of chaotic adrenaline that Farooq found a moment of clarity.

“When things aren’t going according to your plan, they’re going according to His,” she shared, noting that the sudden change in course was a reminder to surrender.

With the team scrambling, a quick decision had to be made.

“The chaos, the energy, everyone pulling together on hope… and somehow, it became one of my favourite looks, loved by so many of you too! We made it on time, in full desi glam,” she wrote.

Farooq then went on to thank her glam team for working tirelessly behind the scenes to make the cast look their best.

“Thank you for making Mango Jutt’s premiere so special with your love and warmth. Now playing in cinemas across Pakistan, take your loved ones, and keep the love coming!”

In the movie, Farooq shares the big screen opposite Faysal Quraishi. The cast also includes Shamoon Abbasi, Ayesha Jehanzeb and Qaiser Piya.

In a story posted to her Instagram account, Afgan said, “People like Abu Bakar and his mother do exist. When Jodi and I got married, I was as shocked as Zaryab.”

The actor said her husband and his family were still “the loveliest, most decent and kindest people in the world” and that she loves her mother-in-law “like my own mother”.

Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) and his mother Khushbakht (Sania Saeed) are shown in Dar-e-Nijaat to be incredibly nice and patient — some have said too much so — with Zaryab (Durefishan Saleem), whose past continues to haunt her after even her marriage to Abu Bakar.

Afgan said early in her marriage, she had asked her husband, “Are you guys really this good? And why do you never fight amongst yourselves, are you aliens?” She said she could relate to Zaryab and that “good humans do exist”.

Earlier, the show’s writer, Umera Ahmed, had also asked why people in the audience had such a hard time believing people could be good to one another.

The writer said people had said her characters seemed “out of [this] world” and “AI-created”, implying that people like this don’t exist in the real world.

In her post, Ahmed asked why her followers felt “basic human traits like kindness, empathy, forgiveness [and] overlooking others’ flaws are [going] extinct from our society” and why, when they are portrayed in the media, people find them unreal.

Ahmed ended the post questioning if we were “deteriorating as a society on basic human morality and goodness”.

Speaking to content creator Bilal Hassan — popularly known as Mystapaki — Khan said Zamil wasn’t just a person, he was a mindset, one which he had seen personally in men and boys he grew up with.

Quoting one of his earlier social media posts, the actor said he would often wonder how these young men, who had mothers and sisters at home, could allow themselves to objectify women the way they did. “I used to question how they allowed themselves… how their mindsets allowed them to speak this way about a woman.”

Hassan brought up how people who are part of these discussions, even if they don’t necessarily agree with what is being said, don’t call out their friends, which is also part of the problem. Both men agreed that many of these boys then tell tall tales to try and top each other in becoming “Zamil Pro Max”.

“What they don’t realise,” Khan said, “is that that in doing this, they are ruining the girl’s life”.

The content creator brought up Zamil’s crisis of faith, which sees him blame Zaryab for his own moral failings, to which Khan said you could pull out anything about his character on the show and it will be problematic.

Khan said his core issue was an identity crisis, which was the result of getting everything he wanted in life with relative ease. He said Zamil really started questioning himself when he failed to succeed as a student and that got worse when he crossed paths with Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) — whom he saw as a rival.

Faith, said Hassan, was also a matter of competition for Zamil, something his guest completely agreed with.

“Zamil’s exploitation of Zaryab with regards to his faith… it’s an absurd thing, an absurd mindset and I have seen such people in life, Bilal. They exist and I feel sorry for them,” the actor said.

When asked whether there was a message in all of this and how we can stop producing more Zamils as a society, Khan said the development of such people and their mindsets began in their childhoods. He said a lot of the damage came from sitting with peers who objectified women and engaged in locker room talk, which boys engage in to “fit in”.

The actor said the way to fight that was through better parenting and trying to deter such behaviour in schools.

Hassan added to this, saying there was a need to raise boys who were “emotionally in touch” but also knew they could be “held accountable” for their actions. He said this also had to start at home, with boys being taken to task for misbehaving with girls and women in their households.

Khan said another important thing to instil in men and boys was empathy, which would allow them to put themselves in other people’s shoes. “If I have empathy and I am about to talk about a girl, I will think, ‘If this happened to my sister or my mother, how would I feel?’ So that’s the point where, whatever wrong course of action you were about to take, you stop.”

Both men agreed that society often told men who didn’t participate in its misogyny they were “boring”, but that it was “better to be boring and better to be alone than to become a Zamil-like character”.

Now that episodes 7 and 8 have aired on Wednesday and Thursday, the drama has everyone firmly in its thrall, with netizens unable to stop talking about it.

The performances — especially Wahaj Ali’s portrayal of Baala’s grief and Mahira Khan’s conflicted Bilqees Bano aka Billo — are being called career-defining, but there’s a lot more to the story than the actors. It’s the drama’s uncompromising look at casteism and honour that has sparked a deeper discussion online.

Baala’s wife, Zarina, played by Amar Khan has raked in overwhelming praise.

Some called her a “breakout star”.

While others empathised with her character on a deeper level.

The story has turned brutal in the last two episodes. Episode 7 ended with the railway crossing shootout, where Baala’s brother Aslam (Achi) is killed and Baala’s world falls apart. Episode 8 then shows his transformation into the hardened Baala Gujrati, a man shaped by loss and tied to the gangster Phajja, played masterfully by Sohail Ahmed.

Ali’s shift from raw grief — a brother unable to perform the last rites — to cold resolve has left viewers stunned.

This user said Baala’s character was written for Ali.

Mahira’s controversial Billo has viewers confused, as she has the ability to be both the victim and the oppressor.

What makes the show more than melodrama is how it handles caste. The divide between Shah (sovereign or master) and Miraasi (generational musicians) drives every betrayal. Billo’s in-laws use her past not for morality, but to protect their bloodline. Baala spends his whole life trying to escape the shackles of his lineage. Fans of the show can’t stop raving about these details.

Some compared the story to Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights, as it involves elements of class-based discrimination and unrequited love.

Viewers also pointed out how religious piety is used to humiliate rather than forgive — as seen when Billo, a faithful wife and obedient daughter-in-law, is kicked out of her own home by her father-in-law over a ‘mistake’ (falling for Baala) made when she was a teenager.

Some fans pointed out how revenge, blinded by hate, can turn fatal quickly and Mitti De Baway has depicted it well.

In the end, Mitti De Baway is more than just a revenge story — it holds up a mirror to society and asks hard questions about caste, honour and hypocrisy. With strong performances, directed by Syed Wajahat Hussain, and bold writing by Faiza Iftikhar, the drama has started a conversation that is clearly not dying down anytime soon.

Both of them have latterly turned to personal projects, working with their wives — film editor Tricia Cooke and actor Frances McDormand — on movies such as Honey Don’t and The Tragedy of Macbeth.

But they said they planned to reunite soon behind the camera, joking that it had to come soon because of their advancing ages.

“We’re getting old. It better be the near future,” Joel, 71, told AFP in a joint interview ahead of a prize ceremony in the French city of Lyon where they are being given the Lumiere lifetime achievement award.

“We have a number of different things in what we call the library, things that we’ve written before,” he added. “And then other things that we’ve thought about writing scripts about and never gotten around. So we don’t know yet.”

He denied reports that “there’s some kind of schism, that there’s some kind of break that happened. In fact, it’s not anything like that.”

Their last film together was 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an offbeat Oscar-nominated Western starring Tim Blake Nelson, which followed the 1950s Hollywood-set satirical comedy Hail, Caesar! in 2016.

Joel will release another solo project next year called Jack of Spades with Josh O’Connor, while Ethan has done a documentary about American pianist Jerry Lee Lewis as well as two other films with lesbian heroines.

Not fantasy

The brothers declined to give any details about what their next joint project would be, but it is unlikely to be fantasy-based.

“It’s definitely some weird cultural thing where mainstream movies are now mostly fantasy: fantasy, science fiction, horror, comic books, all different kinds of fantasy,” Ethan, 69, explained. “It’s a sad thing for us because we’ve never been drawn to those kinds of things.”

He also ruled out doing a TV series, despite serving as an executive producer on the long-running Fargo television adaptation.

“You have to sort of understand that structure in order to do it successfully. And it’s just not what we do. It’s not the way our brains think about stories,” Joel explained.

Cover photo: AFP

The stills, released as part of the magazine’s December 2026 issue, confirm that the finale jumps 17 years ahead of Part Two.

Of course, we see Zendaya’s Chani back in her stillsuit in the Arrakis desert, a return to the world she once called home.

We also see Timothée Chalamet, who plays Paul Atreides, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays his psychic sister Alia, together — with the latter wearing a full white head and body covering.

Netizens couldn’t help but notice that Taylor-Joy’s outfit bears a striking resemblance to traditional Muslim women’s garb. Meanwhile, Chalamet’s shaved head and clothes reminded people of how some Muslim men dress after returning from Hajj.

One user on X joked, “Me and my wife after iftar waiting for her to finish namaz so we can have chai.”

This netizen is getting Pakistani director vibes.

So is this one.

Another remarked it looked like a “standard jummah photo in a Pakistani household”.

One said, “Mashallah Anya sister,” because it really does look like a form of a hijab.

The latest reaction is not the first time Taylor-Joy’s Dune wardrobe has sparked jokes online. In February 2024, her outfit for the Dune: Part Two premiere in London — a flowing white gown that covered her from head to toe — drew a very different kind of reaction.

Many Muslim fans pointed out that while the actor was being praised by the mainstream media for her unique look, the very same modest styles worn by Muslim women — hijabs, niqabs and burqas — are often met with suspicion or worse.

Some critics even argued the moment was a textbook case of appropriation: white celebrities being celebrated for wearing what women of colour and religious minorities are penalised for.

Some also pointed out that Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel was heavily influenced by Islamic history and culture, yet the films have largely removed those influences, while only keeping the visuals.

So while netizens are currently poking fun at Alia’s all-white look, the bigger conversation about the movies’ departure from the source material is far from new.