The actor spoke against the dichotomy drawn between adult sons and daughters when she appeared on Good Morning Pakistan on Tuesday to speak about the insecurities women face in life.

The discussion was revolving around the pressure many women face to give birth to a son rather than a daughter, when Nafees said the ideas that pushed this pressure were now outdated.

“The biggest reason they give is ‘Sons will support you in old-age, daughters will go to their husband’s home,’ whereas in today’s day and age, across all classes, boys leave their parents’ home after marriage. A son is a son till he gets himself a wife, a daughter is a daughter all her life.”

The actor said she knew daughters who supported their parents, even after getting married, insisting that such antiquated ideas need to be “eradicated” from society. She said there were parents out there who had multiple sons, but yearned to have a daughter.

“We are a lazy nation,” Nafees said. “Ask anyone why they want sons and they’ll tell you they want support in old age.”

“Sons aren’t even as affectionate as daughters, but still everyone will tell you they want sons to support them.”

She urged such parents to stand on their own feet: “Be your own support in old age. Use your youth to make enough money to support yourself through retirement.”

Actor Shermeen Ali interjected to say support isn’t necessarily financial and could also be emotional and moral, but said that sons had the right to their own lives with their families.

“When a man gets married, he has a wife and kids, it’s not necessary that he lives [with his parents] all his life. It’s possible he needs to move away… In that sense, I think, sons and daughters are the same at times,” she said.

Ali added that she was the youngest of five girls and she always felt her parents had tried to have a son. She said that they had seemed disappointed over not having a son for some time, but now she and her sisters support their mother just like any son would.

Later, host Nida Yasir moved the direction towards mothers-in-law and how some of them torment their daughters-in-law in an effort to ensure sons remain loyal to their mothers over their wives.

Life coach Saima Hashim said this was a long-running cycle where women who had faced such abuse “projected it” upon the next generation. “The majority of mothers-in-law feel their sons’ marriages present a challenge to their authority… they see a potential for loss of identity.”

Nafees said this went against religious teachings “which say children should be given a separate home when they get married”. She said every family needs their space.

Being a boy-mom herself, the actor said she had already started preparing herself for when her two-year-old son will eventually leave the nest. “It won’t be his wife’s job to care for us. She has no such responsibility.”

She said even if parents couldn’t give their children a separate house, the least they could do was let their incoming daughters-in-law make any changes to the house which would make them more comfortable.

“When people, especially aunties, believe we’re right because of our age and the new girl must be wrong, that’s also where the damage starts.”

Ali said things were hopefully on the path towards change. She said her generation had changed the way they raise kids and might also adopt similar attitudes towards old ideas when those children got married.

Yasir said people needed to mentally prepare themselves for the day their children don’t need them as much as they did when they were kids. She also asked older women to keep themselves busy. “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” she warned.

Diesel and Rodriguez posed with fellow actor Jordana Brewster and the daughter of late co-star Paul Walker, who died in a car crash in 2013, at the French film festival.

The Fast and the Furious will be screened in a midnight slot later in the day, bringing some Hollywood razzle-dazzle to Cannes where US studios are notably absent.

Hollywood majors such as Universal, Disney or Sony, as well as streaming giants Netflix and Amazon, have decided against launching any of their blockbusters on the French Riviera, unlike in previous years.

Pan’s Labyrinth returns to Cannes 20 years after record 22-minute ovation

Reasons for their absence include cost-cutting, a growing preference for tightly controlled social media-led launches, and the risk that a mauling from the Cannes critics can doom a movie.

The first edition of the The Fast and the Furious, a street-racing thriller, helped launch a franchise that has grossed more than seven billion dollars worldwide, according to industry figures.

Diesel announced on Monday that the concept — now in its 11th film — is being adapted into a television series by owner Universal.

Return of Pan’s Labyrinth

Mexican director Guillermo del Toro received the longest-ever standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival two decades ago for his historical fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, which returns this year to the Cannes Classics section.

Speaking, del Toro said the 22-minute ovation given to his Spanish-language film 20 years ago produced a “rush of human emotion.”

“Alfonso Cuaron was there with me because we produced the movie together and he said, ‘let it in, man’,” recalled del Toro on Tuesday.

“I’m not very good with praise and he said, ‘let it in, let love go in’ and I experienced it like that.” Pan’s Labyrinth did not win the top-prize Palme D’Or that year, but del Toro went on to win the best picture Oscar for his fish monster love story The Shape of Water in 2018.

The film, which has been digitally remastered, is set in Spain under the Franco dictatorship and follows a young girl who is enticed by a magical faun to complete three dangerous tasks while also dealing with her ailing pregnant mother and cruel military stepfather.

The concept for Pan’s Labyrinth came when del Toro was at a low point in his creativity following the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.

“I felt really defenceless,” he said, and started to question what the role of a storyteller is in this situation. “I thought it would be really interesting to have a man of rigidity, a captain, having to face magic — something that seems imaginary, but his own notions of what is right and what is wrong, the captain’s notions, are also imaginary,” he added.

The cult classic, which will also be shown in 3D, is set to be re-released in theatres later this year.

Originally published in Dawn, May 14th, 2026

Quoting local newspaper Österreich, The Times of Israel reported two people were removed from the venue over the chants, which could be heard in the show’s live broadcast. Accounts on social media posted footage from the broadcast with audible chants.

The incident follows protests in Vienna, including one where demonstrators placed coffins in the city centre. At the site, 67-year-old Karin Spindlberger told AFP, “Israel has become an aggressor.” She said music brings people together, “but not in this way”.

Protests planned throughout the week leading up to the final on Saturday are expected to draw around 3,000 people to the streets.

Eurovision director Martin Green said the protests and competition taking place simultaneously showed people could have differing opinions on something and coexist. “It is a profoundly good sign of a democracy where you can have this show happening on one side of the city and a protest happening on the other side and they can both coexist. Maybe the world can learn from that,” he said.

This year’s Israeli participation is a lot less politically charged than last year’s, when the country sent Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the October 7, 2023 attack that started Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.

This year’s participant, Bettan, has qualified for the final based on a cumulative score of jury and public votes. He is joined by acts from Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Serbia and Sweden.

Ten more performers will qualify in the second semi-final on Thursday out of this year’s 35 participants — the lowest in 13 years. Hosts Austria, the UK, France, Germany and Italy also have guaranteed spots in the final.

Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain have all boycotted the competition this year in protest against Israel’s participation.

Public broadcasters Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have gone so far as to announce they will not be airing Eurovision at all, with Slovenian RTV opting to run the thematic programme Voices of Palestine instead.

Israel meanwhile continues killing people in Gaza despite a ceasefire having been in place since October. Three more were killed on Sunday, with the total death toll from Israeli military actions standing at over 72,500.

There were big cars, sunglasses, clunky jewellery and a whole lot of rap as contestants were seen performing on stage and dissing their adversaries in rap battles.

On Sunday, the programme’s season promo dropped, revealing it will begin airing from May 24 on Pixel Entertainment’s YouTube channel. This is a delay from an earlier timeline that would have had the show released around Eidul Fitr.

The show will have 12 up and coming rappers battling for the title of Rap Icon over the course of 10 episodes, executive producer Rizwan Siddiqui told Images in December. He said the goal was to “find the next Talha Anjum or next Bohemia”.

Contestants will have to take part in a number of rap-related challenges based around different themes and styles. Many of them will be eliminated as the show goes on, with the best making it into a “grand finale”.

While this is the first such show in Pakistan, the idea of mixing rap and reality TV isn’t new. The Rap Game ran in the US for five seasons between 2016 and 2019. Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow saw big names such as Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, DJ Khaled and Ludacris appear as judges.

Reality TV as a whole seemed to be having a revival in Pakistan in the last couple of years with shows like Masterchef and Shark Tank getting local adaptations. Pakistan Idol was also revived, but faces uncertainty with its finale indefinitely postponed in light of “regional tensions rising and calls for national austerity”.

There is still hope though, as Pakistan’s Got Talent may still be on the cards after Rap Icon.

“AI is here. And so to fight it is to, in a ​sense, to fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So to ​find ways in which we can work with it is a more valuable ⁠path to take,” said Moore.

The US actor, who received her first Oscar nomination for ​body horror The Substance after its Cannes premiere in 2024, is returning to the festival this year ​as one of nine members of the jury who will hand out the Palme d’Or top prize on May 23.

“Are we doing enough to protect ourselves? I don’t know,” added Moore, speaking to journalists. “And so my inclination ​would be to say probably not.”

The festival does not allow generative AI in competition, but ​the conversation about the technology’s role in filmmaking has been a dominant theme at the festival that positions ‌itself ⁠as a gatekeeper of what qualifies as cinema.

First Korean Jury president

Park Chan-wook, the first Korean filmmaker to lead the jury, reflected on how Korea has become a cinema industry powerhouse since he brought his thriller Oldboy to Cannes in 2004.

“Korea is no longer at the outskirts of the ​global cinematic industry,” he ​said, speaking through a ⁠translator.

“The reason behind it isn’t only because Korean film did very well and made it to the centre of the industry. It’s because ​the centre of the global film industry itself has expanded,” he said.

That ​made it ⁠possible for him to be named jury president, said Park, adding that he promised not to be biased towards the Korean entry, Na Hong‑jin’s Hope.

Comparing the 22 competition films and ranking them in first, ⁠second ​and third place might feel like a “meaningless” act, he ​said.

“But that’s also where the value of that lies, because it’s an opportunity to tell everyone and to beg everyone ​to please watch these films.”

In a lengthy note posted on Instagram on Tuesday, the actor said people who had no “knowledge or insight” into the craft were on YouTube reviewing dramas.

Feroze said it’s “easy to criticise and pass comments” without understanding the hard work that goes into such projects and without knowing the value artists bring.

“I simply want to say that every artist, actor, writer, and creator deserves respect and encouragement,” the actor wrote.

He also made it clear that he was not against critique from people who knew what they were talking about. “Constructive criticism is always welcome, but negativity without understanding can deeply affect people who work day and night for their art.”

Feroze asked his own fans to lend their support to artists who faced such harsh and unfair judgement and show them the kindness and positivity everyone needs and deserves.

The actor thanked everyone for paying attention to what was “just a little note from my heart.”

Feroze isn’t the first one to say this and he likely won’t be the last either. Mahira Khan also asked viewers of her drama 2021 Hum Kahan Key Sachey Thay — her first after a five-year hiatus — to not jump the gun and wait for the show to finish before dragging it through the dirt.

Actor Aagha Ali also felt some criticism towards the drama Main Manto Nahi Hoon was a bit excessive, especially when it came to elements like sets and wardrobes.

The drama’s star, Humayun Saeed, said he didn’t take criticism of the show too seriously. However, some of the critique Ali and Saeed were talking about came from senior actors such as Atiqa Odho and Marina Khan, who definitely are masters of their craft and speak from years of industry experience.

In a style of censure usually reserved for women and their choices, Mustafa received intense public backlash for wearing a pair of shorts and sitting with his legs crossed.

The actor was called “shameless”, “vulgar” and all sorts of other names people used most recently to talk about fellow actor Dananeer Mobeen and sheer tights she wore under a skirt.

Mishi Khan, the actor known more for her social media commentary than her acting, even chided him for showcasing his “beautiful hairy legs”. She said different places had different dress codes and it wasn’t appropriate for male celebrities to be wearing shorts during interviews. “You’re not at some beach party,” she remarked.

She also talked about how women face so much more flak for these things and asked why everyone who treated Mobeen’s clothes like the end of the world just last week was silent today.

She wasn’t alone in this criticism — the internet was awash with people who were offended by Mustafa’s clothes for one reason or the other. From the hypocrisy of men being allowed to wear shorts when women were criticised for it relentlessly to his clothes being inappropriate for an interview, a lot was said.

However, it seems Mustafa knew this was going to happen and simply did not care enough about the haters. In the interview, he made a point about double standards in Pakistani society, where some things are kosher in foreign films but Pakistani filmmakers face backlash for doing them.

He said Nora Fatehi and her dances were hugely popular in Pakistan, but if Mehwish Hayat — his Zombeid co-star who was sitting next to him — danced in Na Maloom Afraad, it was suddenly not okay.

This is when he got to his shorts and asked what the big deal was if he did wear them. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve been wearing them since I was a child, they’re just shorts. What’s the matter?”

He said he had worn shorts in school all the way till sixth grade and continues to wear them for activities like badminton and cricket. The actor said you could go out on an evening stroll and see 10 people also wearing shorts, so it was unclear to him what the issue was.

When host Aamna Isani asked if he wore the shorts to promote his own clothing line, he retorted quickly. “I don’t give a s**t, that’s why I wear them. Why is everyone telling me what to wear and what not to wear?”

He then promptly used the opportunity to promote his clothing business.

The sad reality is that Mustafa is right. Society has a habit of linking clothes to morals and then policing them, for men and especially for women. While Mustafa is wondering why everyone is telling him what to wear, we’re wondering how this is one of the first male actors in the country who’s been policed for their clothes, especially given that female actors are policed nonstop.

Perhaps the solution is just to let everyone wear and do what they want…

But that’s okay. This adaptation of Michael’s life — directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equaliser), written by John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator), and produced by Graham King (Bohemian Rhapsody, The Departed) — is a perfect recap-cum-balancing act.

A film that’s neither ‘Dangerous’ when it comes to pushing narrative boundaries, nor ‘Bad’ when it comes to storytelling, nor a ‘Thriller’ when it comes to keeping you hooked on unexpected plot turns, nor just ‘Black or White’. It gives you just enough “best of” moments to keep you engaged, but plays it safe by toning down the creativity.

Michael is a harmless, good enough film about a musical icon who didn’t care to be just ‘good enough’

For the most part, the way Fuqua, Logan and King tell the story suggests that their priority is to present the most dramatic, mellow and generally palatable representation of Michael’s life. It is a straightforward account of what people already know, presented in a way where the drama doesn’t shatter the ceiling, or introduce the kind of human frailty and fallibility that might sully Michael Jackson’s image.

Like I said earlier, it is a balancing act — one that only delves into the first half of the pop icon’s life; a story about a young man freeing himself from his father’s shackles. It is a hard sell, let me tell you, because the angle is all bark and no bite.

In 1966, we see Michael as a young prodigy (Juliano Krue Valdi) whose ambition is kept in check by his dad, Joseph ‘Joe’ Jackson (Colman Domingo). Joe, a steelworker from Gary, Indiana, is an enterprising, hard man who wants his children, The Jackson 5, to be a perfect music band. That means late-night rehearsals on school nights without a peep. When Michael, the shining star of the group, objects, he gets the belt.

The young Michael — though he loves his family — bides his time and, within two years, his charisma and talent lands the band at Motown Records, the biggest label for African American artists. Success comes quickly, and the family quickly moves from their small house to a mansion.

Michael grows up, now played by his real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, who blurs the lines between sincerity and parody with a committed performance. We see his quirks (he calls his pet giraffe, llama and his chimp, Bubbles, his friends), some human depth (he visits terminally ill children in hospital wards), his yearnings (he fancies the infantile escape from reality that Peter Pan represents), his technical and creative ambition, and his soft, diabolical side.

We see his ‘Smooth Criminal’ ways when he uses his new record label power to fire his dad. By the time the film nears its two-hour runtime, one wonders how it will culminate Michael’s journey, when there is just so much left to tell.

You won’t like the answer: with an ending card that reads, “His story continues.”

One film, in this case, isn’t enough. The better, darker parts of Michael’s life are definitely just around the bend in a sequel that has already been greenlit. Perhaps that one will have the guts to not be this sterile or merely stick to the surface.

Despite the lack of daring storytelling-wise, the production is top-notch, and the songs force you to involuntarily swing back and forth in your seat, but that goes without saying — this is a harmless, good enough film for a man who didn’t care to be just “good enough.”

Released by HKC and Universal, Michael is, unsurprisingly and perhaps amusingly — given the studio-rated ‘U’ (Universal) — suitable for audiences of all ages.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, May 10th, 2026

The trailer for the film — which claims to be Pakistan’s first zombie thriller — dropped on Monday, showing a mix of guts, gore and some good old Pakistani humour.

From what we can decipher, the movie is set in Karachi, with Mustafa shown as a mixed martial artist and Hayat as his romantic interest. A virus outbreak starts at the venue of one of Mustafa’s cage matches — on the night before Eid no less — with Hayat in attendance.

The pair along with a number of hapless civilians must then try to survive until help is sent by authorities who initially refuse to believe any of it is even real — there’s a scene where a visibly annoyed cop hears about it and exclaims “Zumbees? Everyone’s up for a joke on Chand Raat”.

The government does get involved later and what follows can only be described as a mashup of some classic 80s action movies.

Mustafa, dressed in a sleeveless tank top with a bandana tied around his head — looking oddly like Sylvester Stallone in First Blood — punches, kicks and otherwise battles white-eyed brain-eaters.

There’s a scene where he looks at Hayat and repeats Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic line from the 1984 sci-fi thriller The Terminator — you know the line. In another scene, he can be seen leaping off a roof like Bruce Willis in everyone’s favourite 80s holiday movie Die Hard — but, y’know, with zombies.

The film doesn’t appear to be for the squeamish or the weak of heart, but for anyone who can handle the graphic violence, it will hit theatres globally in just over a couple of weeks on the first day of Eid.

For the uninitiated, the drama centres around Zeba, who is stuck in a toxic marriage for over 20 years and has four children (how two people who can’t stand each other end up having four kids is a whole other drama for another day). The early episodes are set in the ’80s, if not the ’90s, before we’re suddenly brought to the present — where the kids are all grown up.

Warning: Spoilers ahead as this piece is mainly about the last two episodes.

When Zeba finally chooses to leave Jami (after what feels like an eternity), it should be a triumphant moment. Instead, you mostly just think: it’s about time. To give credit where it’s due, Sanam Saeed’s brilliant and nuanced performance makes you believe in her and root for her, even when the script falters. Such as when secures her khula — a major victory — around that time, almost on cue, Jami 2 (or is he Jami 1?) appears and proposes — while she’s still in iddat.

The good part is that for once, her children — especially her son — and even her mother and siblings urge her to consider the proposal. Zeba, however, stands her ground and says no, making it clear she refuses to leap into another marriage where she must answer to someone else. We’re mercifully spared the tired “how can a woman remarry?” clichés, which is a breath of fresh air. In fact, the fact that her remarriage is treated relatively normally says a lot about how audience attitudes towards divorced women remarrying are slowly changing. So far, so good.

But then, in what feels like the blink of an eye — after just one encounter with Jami 2’s late wife’s mother, whose acting is so awful that you’d expect the opposite effect — Zeba is suddenly persuaded to say qabool hai, qabool hai, qabool hai.

It’s a letdown, because this was the moment the story needed to pause and breathe. Zeba deserved time to reflect, to hesitate, to truly consider what a second marriage meant after all she’d endured. Instead, decades of pain are swept aside in a single scene. 

It feels less like a genuine and well-thought-out decision and more like the drama just needed her to say yes so it could quickly move on to the next wedding. (More on that later.)

Ultimately, Zeba’s journey, which should have been given the most importance, gets diluted in the rush to wrap everything else up.  

The same hurried logic hits Saif and Varda’s storyline. Varda, sulking at her mother’s house, suddenly has an epiphany because her mother leaves her a lone slice of bread to eat and heads out to dinner. That’s all it takes for Varda to realise how cherished she was by her husband and his family — so she returns to her hubby’s and indulges in sasu maa’s dinner. (Foodpanda, anyone?) 

Back to Zeba — she remarries, and suddenly her beloved son Subuk decides he can now marry Daneer, despite all his earlier detailed and lengthy protests about being poor and unable to provide for some of her ‘isstatus’. What changed? Did he just assume his new daddy-ji would foot their bills? And while we’re on that note, isn’t Gen Z supposedly delaying marriage and concentrating on themselves? Kafeel clearly didn’t get that memo!

Interestingly, writer Umera Ahmed later clarified that the original time lapse in the script was actually 27 years, with the children meant to be fully grown adults. According to her, casting changes compressed the timeline, which explains why viewers were left wondering whether the drama was marrying off people who still looked like teenagers.

What’s also missing is any reaction from Jami 1 — her now ex-husband. And honestly, after all his constant comments about how she’d end up alone, miserable, or “out on the streets” without him, the audience earned the right to watch him suffer a little.

We deserved at least one scene of him properly seething at the sight — or at least the thought — of Zeba happily remarried and moving on without him. Instead, the drama skips over his reaction completely, which is ridiculous given that he was ever present in all the previous episodes.

Ultimately, Kafeel falls into the same trap many Pakistani dramas do: dragging on for months, only to rush through the resolution at record speed. Characters spend episode after episode crying, arguing and suffering, but when the emotional payoff finally arrives, it’s squeezed into a hurried finale.

The three countries, along with the Nether­lands and Iceland, pulled out of this year’s event in Vienna, which kicks off on Tuesday and culminates in Saturday’s grand final.

Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip prompted the five countries to withdraw from the world’s biggest live televised music event — with Eurovision director Martin Green vowing to do “anything in our power to find a pathway back” for them.

Suspicions were also raised that the public televoting system was being manipulated to boost Israel at Eurovision 2025 in Basel, Switzerland. Furthermore, some broadcasters voiced concerns about media freedom, with Israel preventing their journalists from accessing Gaza.

“Instead of the Eurovision circus, the national television programme will be coloured by the thematic programme series Voices of Palestine,” Slovenian broadcaster RTV said.

Ireland are joint-record seven-time Eurovision winners, but on Saturday, RTE will be showing a Eurovision-themed episode of the popular 1990s Irish-based sitcom Father Ted instead. Spain’s RTVE will run its own musical special, The House of Music. Public service broadcasters in the Netherlands and Iceland will screen the competition, despite neither taking part.

Only 35 countries will take part in Eurovision this year — the fewest since entry was expanded in 2004 — following the five withdrawals. As to whether those countries could return, Eurovision chief Green said: “We’ve got five members of our family missing this year. We miss them and we love them and we hope they come back.

Originally published in Dawn, May 12th, 2026

The BBC had cited concerns over partiality when declining to broadcast the documentary. It was later aired by Channel 4. The documentary, directed by Karim Shah, was nominated in the Current Affairs and Director: Factual categories. 

According to Al Jazeera, while accepting the award, executive producer Ben de Pear thanked the journalists behind the film and then addressed the BBC. “Finally, just a question for the BBC: Given you dropped our film, will you drop us from the Bafta screening later tonight?”

Journalist and presenter Ramita Navai also criticised the BBC during her speech, citing findings from the documentary’s investigation into attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system, according to the publication. “These are the findings of our investigation that the BBC paid for but refused to show,” she said. “But we refuse to be silenced and censored. We thank Channel 4 for showing this film.”

According to The Telegraph, the BBC chose not to air Navai’s speech in full and instead presented a “carefully edited version which removed her claims about Israel’s actions”. The Bafta awards are broadcast on BBC One after a delay of two hours.

The BBC’s decision not to broadcast Gaza: Doctors Under Attack came after it faced criticism for another documentary it aired narrated by a young Palestinian boy who was the son of a Hamas official. His father’s profession was not disclosed in the documentary.

Speaking backstage after their win, executive producer de Pear praised Gazan journalists Jaber Badwan and Osana Al Ashi, who contributed footage for the documentary. He said the team “woke up every day wondering if the two journalists on the ground were still alive”.

Cover: Screen grab via BBC

“The Legend of Maula Jatt has broken into one of the most exclusive film quotas in the world — the first Pakistani film ever to do so,” he wrote on X. The film will be in cinemas across the country from May 21.

Lashari dubbed this “a huge moment for Pakistani cinema and a new door opening for our stories on the world stage”.

He also shared a film poster in Mandarin and a dubbed version of the trailer.

The film stars Fawad and Mahira, Humaima Malick, Hamza Ali Abbasi, Gohar Rasheed, Faris Shafi and Ali Azmat, and is a reboot of the 1979 cult classic Maula Jatt, reimagining Punjab’s own superhero for a world audience.

The movie made Rs1 billion at the domestic box office and $10 million at the worldwide box office, as of January 2023, making it one of, if not the highest performing Pakistani films ever.

In 2024, the film was supposed to release in India, but did not due to opposition from hardline nationalist parties. Had it released in India, The Legend of Maula Jatt would have been the first Pakistani movie in Indian cinemas in over a decade, after Shoaib Mansoor’s 2011 Bol.

“Whoever I will be with in the future, I also don’t want them to get uncomfortable because of all of this… things circulating, going around,” the actor said.

Aside from future concerns, she said such things affected her family life in the present too. “It does make me uncomfortable, because my family starts getting affected quite a lot. They ask me, ‘Beta, why are they saying this?’ My parents are simple people.”

Mobeen did clarify that this had less to do with her work and more with what people were saying, adding that her parents enjoyed watching her latest romantic drama, Meem se Mohabbat, with Ahad Raza Mir.

The actor said they had always been ‘scared’ about her line of work and the perception of the media industry for people on the outside looking in was “skewed”, calling it a “harsh reality”. She said her family had no ties to the media at all before she joined the field and that made her parents fear for her from the beginning.

Mobeen said she understands their concerns more as she grows older, becoming protective of girls who have entered the industry after her. “If I am feeling this at my age, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my parents, sending me into the industry from the bubble they had built.”

Her co-stars, however, were cooperative and supportive, so rumours on the internet never made things awkward on set. She said some even approached the issue with banter and light-hearted humour, so it’s never a problem for her professionally.

She said she had grown up a lot in the last five years and that she would be “unrecognisable” to her younger self. She also faced a lot of “scrutiny” from the public during this time, which she said affected her to some degree. “I have no shame in admitting that… I am not made of metal,” she said.

That scrutiny reared its head recently when the actor was in London to promote her film Mera Lyari and posted a picture of herself wearing skin-tone leggings — earning the ire of fans.

Mobeen said that particular incident didn’t hit her too hard because it was just so ridiculous. She said she was “dying from the cold” and wore tights to keep warm. “What’s the big deal, why is this in headlines?” she asked.

She also questioned society’s obsession with policing women’s morals. “Men have shirtless photoshoots, nobody bats an eye, but they dragged me over fleece leggings like I’d committed some grave sin. I just don’t understand why this is treated like an issue of ‘respect’.”

Undeterred and always willing to make a fashion statement, the actor wore a special top for the interview, with a deep meaning behind it.

Made using recycled cigarette butts from the set of Mera Lyari, she explained she had the jersey especially made because she felt like she had to send a message after being part of a project where smoking was shown on screen.

Mobeen joked that everyone on set thought it was so weird when she’d go around picking up their trash, but it turned out really well.

The Next Salahuddin, a children’s film about a Gazan boy who dreams of conquering Jerusalem, has been picked up by HUM TV for a future release, the channel announced on Friday. The film had a limited theatrical run earlier this year across nine Pakistani cities.

Created by Jinn TV, the film follows Yousuf, whose childhood is taken away from him by a — presumably Israeli — airstrike that kills his family members and leaves him buried under the rubble of his home.

The boy then works towards his goal of uniting Muslims around the world to avenge his people and raise the Palestinian flag over the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, shadowing the achievements of Salahuddin Ayubi — the Muslim general who captured the city during the Crusades.

The film was conceptualised by Ustadh Asim Ismail and brought to life by Farhan Siddiqui, who wrote and created it using AI. A Malaysian non-profit organisation, Cinta Gaza Malaysia, was also involved in the film’s development.

In the announcement’s comment section, the mood was less jovial than expected and people wondered if this was really the right way to go about making a film on such an important topic.

Netizens questioned if HUM TV, part of one of the largest media companies in Pakistan, lacked the resources to make a film on the Palestinian struggle without using AI.

Some users pointed out the controversies surrounding the use of AI itself, like its wasteful use of clean water and the fact it has been called out for enabling the exploitation of artists and writers.

Others made their point very clear: AI is not art. They also called on people to boycott generative AI.

HUM TV has not given a release date for the film yet and it remains to be seen how the film will be received by audiences when it does air.

While one can occasionally need social and material support from those around them, the gendered aspect of this equation is rather unsavoury, especially when the one being served is a man, and the women are the obligatory givers. Women chronically break their backs to provide for the men around them and Kafeel takes us through the tipping point of this cultural crisis.

Typically, women work overtime caring for the home, the kids and the elderly. Add a man to this mix of caregiving and homes topple. The premise of this drama is the call-out that any marriage will break apart when a man doesn’t provide financially, emotionally and psychologically.

The reason this drama is fresh is that the falling apart is not depicted as the woman’s fault, in fact, what makes Kafeel rare is that it does not even entertain the notion of whether it might be. A blameless woman is refreshingly close to the human condition and reminds me of the Haseena Moin and Noorul Huda Shah era of Pakistani dramas. It reminds me of the point Hum Gunahgar Aurtain was making when Kishwar Naheed wrote the poem about almost everything being a woman’s fault.

It takes two to bhangra

Perhaps some feminists would call this a very archaic take on gender roles — the assumption that a man brings home the nihari and the woman provides homely dhobi services — but the point I’d like to make is that men have so much privilege in society, the least they can do is the job that gains them all that privilege in the first place.

You must have heard the trite bicycle-wheel analogy — that a marriage can only work if both wheels are working. Sadly, in Pakistani contexts, this lame analogy is only used if a woman doesn’t perform her role well, hardly ever is a man held accountable for a lifetime of freeloading off women’s invisible labour.

The other injustice rests in the fact that we do need these gender norms to prevail in earnest because the economy is so archaic. Especially during child-rearing years, men need to bring in the food because women, though capable, are stretched thin. Pakistan, for all practical purposes, is stuck in a pre-industrial time — agrarian for the most part — where only 23 per cent of women enter the workforce, mainly in menial or care jobs. Only a negligible portion of women have more than a $1,000 in their bank accounts. So, there is no way that traditional gender roles don’t rule this world.

After Rafia Zakaria’s takedowns of white feminism, it becomes imperative to understand that being more modern does not necessitate being more liberated for women in this non-white context. I believe that working women in Pakistan got the short end of the stick because they entered the workforce and ended up doing three jobs for low pay. They do these three jobs — home, work and caregiving — while their spouses sometimes have merely one job, or in the case of Kafeel, no job at all.

Earning money does not always earn women dignity. In fact, they may even be looked down upon, resulting in lower status.

The value of a woman’s work

The rupee must be valued, because any disposable income a woman has in this society is going to be spent on her family. Yet, the economics of empowerment dictate that you are only as powerful as your disposable income. So, working women are no more and no less than indentured servants, blocked within the framework of the traditional wife and daughter-in-law, with only a paycheque to show for their aspirational freedom.

But aspirational freedom is not real freedom.

A paycheque earned by a middle-class woman goes mostly toward paying for the rising cost of diapers, milk, salt, school fees, bus fees and bitter gourds. There is nothing left for her own protection.

This is the world Sanam Saeed’s character Zeba inhabits as she runs on the hamster wheel of providing for her four children. And this is precisely what Kafeel understands that almost no Pakistani drama before it has bothered to — that the system failing Zeba is not abstract. It has a face. It is her husband, Jami’s face.

The drama does not examine the economy nor the patriarchy — it locates the rot in one man’s refusal to be accountable, and it does not flinch from that.

Until Kafeel came along, no one tackled the anthropological disaster that is the modern Pakistani working woman stuck with a man who loves glory more than his children. No one depicted, with all its ugliness, how gross it is to see a mother burn the candle at both ends. No one had chronicled how unsavoury it is when a perfectly intelligent woman abandons herself for the sake of societal acceptance.

A believable drama with extraordinary performances

Saeed has been a spectacular show of force in her performance especially for the believability with which she dramatises the mayhem of walking the world of marriage alone, with only responsibility as her life force. Her performance has been on point.

No one says she should not be Sisyphus, pushing a boulder uphill with her mere nail. We women have been doing the boulder-pushing for eons, proving that if only we gave a few more drops of blood to domesticity, the bicycle would be a bicycle. But sometimes a spanner is just a spanner. Relationships are saved by more than one person.

You strip a woman of all power, yet when it comes to saving the home, she is paradoxically held as the most powerful. Women stay in such situations predominantly due to a poverty of time — time to think, plan and strategise an exit.

When a woman is exhausted, no one is surprised. It is the most normal thing for a star-crossed woman to chaotically run from one end to another, doing something lifesaving.

But seeing a woman in control, poised, with enough money to throw at several problems until she has no problem left, is a sight no one has seen. I am willing to bet our mothers’ generation has never been caught enjoying their lives, merely chilling out. Yet what is it that we see men doing? Their life is a proverbial golf course, a proverbial charpoy, a proverbial pulpit, a proverbial couch or keyboard.

The contrast is so stark between Zeba, and Jami, that you want to reach out across the screen and shake him out of his moronic life goals — which include eating chicken patties, cribbing and complaining, and insisting that Zeba has raised the kids ‘wrong’.

The fact that he is painfully good looking is not helpful at all. But then again, most narcissists are. If they aren’t, they have so much charm that they make up for it. Highly toxic and severely emotionally challenged, Jami’s character is loathsome without being melodramatic. An evil character portrayed especially well. 

Come back in a coffin and other wedding gifts

Zeba and Jami are a household phenomenon.

The girl is wed, she is told to never return to her family home except in a coffin. Soon after, tiny pieces of her are shipped back to what was once her home in tinier coffins. In return, she receives handouts from her family, because the man she married refused to get a job, insisting that he came from privilege and maintaining a false sense of aristocracy.

Typically, what happens in a Zeba-Jami mess is that society looks the other way forever. Jami would refuse to be held accountable, and get more set in his ways. Zeba would decide to redouble her efforts, assuming she needed to prove herself. Typically, it is always a win-win for Jami.

Instead, Kafeel refuses to be a ‘typical’ drama. It does not deal in the usual Pakistani drama bargain where the woman’s suffering is redeemed by her patience. It demands that the man answer for himself. In Pakistani television, that is close to revolutionary.

Kafeel is a spiritual drama. It insists that there is more to marriage than a transfer of power. It insists, in the form of Zeba’s wizened father, that a marriage is a contract. One party not pulling their weight in life will cause a fissure, then a gaping hole, and eventually there will be a legal breach of contract. No matter how much one acts like Zeba.

I know no elder who has been that wise.

Elders become wise like this after the woman leaves, not before she leaves and certainly not during. Elders these days are all about the convenience of optics — how it looks to everyone. Elders are — and almost always have been — addicted to a woman who is muzzled or silenced at all costs and makes very little fuss.

Elders insist that once a mistake has been made and a match is not a good fit, that the mistake must be converted into a life sentence. Some call it sabar-shukar. Kafeel calls it peace at the cost of justice.

Zeba’s father is the real hero

In the drama, there is such immense clarity from Zeba’s father when he says that the role of the man is to instil peace with justice. It may be a role for a woman too, but first, a man must be a protector. With the GDP per capita ratio being what it is in Pakistan, it is important that that provision means money.

Zeba’s father does not shy away from talking money.

Often, when the broader relative cabal wants the woman to not make a peep, they usually do so because they are uncomfortable about speaking about the role money has in the breakdown of a marriage. But money is ubiquitous. Money is everything. It is hair on a good hair day, it is a breeze after a 10k hike, it is a shawl at the beginning of winter, and it certainly pays those relative’s food bills.

Yet, there is so much aversion to honest money-talk. There is so much distaste for talking about this one thing that fuels your life.

Jami can’t work, won’t work

Jami is a sick man. My thesis is that men who are kept, and then willingly stay within the confines of false status are removed from the blessings of good old fashioned hard work. They find hustle beneath their glory and would rather the women slog at work just like they do at home.

The truth of the economy evades them and the truth of the household economy definitely evades them. They have no clue what proportion and measure go into running a household — the cost of the UPS, plumbing repairs and the rising price of LNG and gasoline, or even the mounting health costs of a dysfunctional household.

Pakistan makes no sense sometimes, making weddings a million-dollar industry but making marriages a woman-only problem. Zeba is a special breed because she thinks: no, thank you.

There is always a point in a woman’s life where something gives way. For Zeba, it was getting shoved against the wall and having her mouth twisted. She spoke up with that same mouth when she asked for her right to a safe environment.

Every time a woman snaps in two, an angel somewhere sings.

The Jamis of the world are just people, not deities we are made to worship and bow down to thanks to male privilege. Male privilege in moderate quantities is a slow poison for women, but in excess, it snaps a woman in two.

Kafeel beautifully portrays how this poison can become an impetus through which a woman can rise from the ashes. But first, she has to use her feet.

The seasoned drama reviewer was on the show Kya Drama Hai when host Mukarram Kaleem called for a discussion on the show’s last episode and asked what the panelists — Odho, Marina Khan and Nadia Khan — thought of the drama.

Odho said she could tell where the story was going from the get go. “I felt that there was a very predictable story, but told well.”

She told Kaleem it was rare to see a story where you couldn’t tell what was going to happen, especially in Pakistan. She said there were shows that left audiences guessing at every twist and turn, like White Lotus, which she had started recently, but this was hard to come by.

She praised Kafeel for its positive ending and how the show tied everything together. She was also happy with the messaging the show had for audiences, like how Warda ends up finding her place with her in-laws.

The actor said she also loved the way they had depicted the bond between a mother and her son through Subuk and Zeba. “They’ve shown such a strong mother-son bond, which is accurate too. Boys are always, always on their mother’s side, I can tell you this from experience.”

She said that, in her experience daughters will pick a fight with their mums, but her son has supported her in everything she’s ever done. “I know that boys are very soft with their mothers and here, I liked seeing the mother-son dynamic. I loved seeing that the mother who went through such abuse and deprivation, all her children collectively thought to give her a second chance at happiness. They looked at her as a human being, not just as a woman or a mother.”

Later in the show, Odho revealed her affinity for the mother-son dynamic was because she had “lived this experience” herself. She recalled a time when, after her divorce, her son came to her and suggested she get married to her now-husband, Samar Ali Khan.

“It was my son who came to me and said I should get married for a third time. That’s not something you do lightly, a third marriage, even my mother wasn’t on board, saying people will make jokes.”

She said she was also initially hesitant because she anticipated resistance from her daughters. When she told her son about that, he assured her he would convince his sisters personally.

But these descriptions, one feels, do not do justice to the way the narrative challenged troubling, deep-rooted societal norms and upended notions of honour in 27 riveting episodes.

Mirror to society

If Aik Aur Pakeezah can be likened to the metaphorical ‘mirror to society’, then the image it reflects is a multi-layered one, shrouded in colours that are gloomy, with some spurts of brightness.

Peer deeper into the reflection, and you see shadows that conceal secrets; bright nooks that look appealing from afar but have deep cracks running through them; dark, painful corners; and then, in the far distance, a ray of light for those who choose to fight for what is right.

In a fleeting glance, you could say that the drama exposes the debilitating consequences of cybercrime and society’s inclination to victim-blame. But delve deeper into the story’s architecture, and you find so many more points of conversation, so many norms being challenged, and so much that is disturbing and yet entirely relatable.

Extremely nuanced, tightly woven and intensely thought-provoking, yet widely entertaining, the recently concluded drama serial Aik Aur Pakeezah managed to get some very pertinent messages about cybercrime and the victimisation of women across to audiences

Masterfully written by Bee Gul and directed by Kashif Nisar, this isn’t just an ordinary drama with a linear story that culminates in a happy, romantic ending. The plot weaves through different tracks, designed to make the audience think, to fall in love with the characters and empathise with them.

The story swings between Pakeezah (Sehar Khan) and Faraz (Nameer Khan) — whose lives fall to pieces when they are filmed at gunpoint and then their video is released on the internet — to the home of Mummy (Hina Bayat), who is caustic but well-meaning and has a mysterious, murky past, and the lives of Saman (Amna Ilyas) and Zubair (Gohar Rasheed), two newlywed lawyers confronted by a moral dilemma.

Other pivotal characters take their places, like the perfectly fitting pieces of a puzzle: the family, grappling with their sanity now that their ‘honour’ has been sullied; the village woman who lost her youth and her wealth to the family of her deceased husband; the criminal, bolstered by his ego and a twisted sense of morality; and members of the legal system, varying from those who encourage fighting against injustice to others who cringe at the shame attached to the crime.

Bee Gul on emotional exhaustion

I ask Bee Gul, who can be credited for writing some of Pakistan’s finest TV drama scripts over the years, if this is the best script that she has written? She laughs.

“The finest is yet to come!” she says. “I can’t really look at my scripts from that perspective, because I get so engrossed in the world that I have created that I am unable to distance myself and look at the story from an objective point of view.

“Writing Aik Aur Pakeezah was emotionally exhausting and painful and, in my mind, all that was unfolding on paper was real. It was after I wrote it, when I would read out scenes to the director or the cast, that my ears would process the scenes and there were times when I would break down.”

Time and again, dialogues tug at the heart. The titular Pakeezah, tearfully taunts Faraz, highlighting how men are forgiven by their families and not blamed, while women are deserted completely: “Tu apne baap ke saath shaljam gosht kha sakta hai, jo teri maan ne pakaya hai. Main apnay ghar mein tau kya apni gali mein bhi paer nahin rakh sakti [While you’re free to enjoy a meal with your father that your mother has cooked, I’m not even allowed to set foot in my street, let alone my home].”

At another point, Pakeezah’s tone-deaf mother reasons that it was because her daughter had been overdressed and had slapped a man in her neighbourhood when he had tried to grab her hand, that that man took revenge on her with a viral digital video: “Aurat zaat ko dheema ho ke, neecha ho ke chalna hota hai gali mein… jawan larrka hai… machine thorri hai… larrkay se ho jati hain aisi ghalatiyaan jawani mein…. [Women should walk softly and shrink themselves while walking in the street… he is a hot-blooded youth… not a machine… young men do make such mistakes in their youth].”

In the final, groundbreaking episode, Mummy makes an observation when the women in the family of a newborn girl, whose mother had been murdered, refuse to adopt her because she is ‘larrki zaat’ [female]:“Abhi jayega na ghar, tau bitha kar maan, taayi, chaachi ko poochhna woh kaun zaat hain? [When you go home, make your mother and aunts sit down and explain to you what gender they belong to].”

Writing Aik Aur Pakeezah was emotionally exhausting and painful and, in my mind, all that was unfolding on paper was real. It was after I wrote it, when I would read out scenes to the director or the cast, that my ears would process the scenes and there were times when I would break down,” says writer Bee Gul

There are the conversations in Pakeezah’s home, where her elder brother, Akbar (Umer Darr), who once doted on her, wishes that she were dead now that she has stained the family’s honour. In one unnerving episode, he gets so enraged that he tries to kill Pakeezah. Then there are her parents, who initially abandoned their daughter, blaming her for bringing shame to the family, and later become her staunch supporters.

And then there is Faraz, Pakeezah’s husband, who stands by her side even when she recoils from him, standing his ground when his family tells him to leave her, disturbed by the scandal but insistent that the two of them would be able to weather the storm together.

There is, of course, the contradiction lying within Pakeezah’s name itself. The Urdu word implies ‘purity’ and yet, Pakeezah, a young girl with dreams and ambitions, is labelled ‘impure’ because of someone’s heartless crime.

Pakeezah and Faraz

The performances are uniformly brilliant but, of course, the ones that really stand out are the leads.

“I didn’t premeditate my role,” says Sehar Khan, who proved her mettle as one of the country’s finest young actresses with her enactment of Pakeezah. “I just thought, how would I have reacted if this had happened to me? And this is how I performed every scene. The pain on screen was my own pain and I hope that people have seen the drama as if it is their own pain.”

What was the most painful scene for her to enact?

“There were so many,” she says. “One of them was when Pakeezah finds Saman, the lawyer who finally helps her out. This is the first time that she feels that there is someone who can help get her justice, and understands how she has been violated. For the first time, she breaks down, and I was actually crying uncontrollably in that scene.

“And then the scene in the final episode, where Pakeezah’s mother, in her own way, tells her that it would be an injustice if she forgave her brother, who had tried to murder her. It was a very nuanced, emotional moment.”

Sehar continues: “I actually had to take some time off after playing Pakeezah because the character had drained me emotionally. My main reason for signing on to the drama was that the script had been written by Bee Gul, and Kashif Nisar was directing it. It was only after working in the drama that I could see why Kashif Nisar is respected the way he is.”

For actor Nameer Khan, the drama marks his first time as a male lead.

“I learnt a lot and improved immensely as an actor,” he says. “For me, the biggest challenge was that Faraz’s family was not shown on screen, and yet he would talk about them constantly.

“I had to believably depict Faraz’s struggles and the pain inflicted upon him by the people around him, without the audience being able to see these people physically. I think, to some extent, I was able to do this.”

Kashif Nisar on directing discomfort

Director Kashif Nisar observes that he had come across such an intelligent script after a long time. “It was very contemporary, very current, very grounded in reality. Bee Gul is an amazing writer.”

Is it relatively tricky tackling a drama centred around certain issues?

“Yes, it is tricky,” says the director. “If four people sitting in a lounge are watching the drama and even two of them begin to get uncomfortable, they are likely to switch the channel and just watch something where pleasant music is playing. It is difficult to grip the audience with a hard watch, but we have tried.”

Aik Aur Pakeezah’s beginning is particularly harrowing, giving glimpses of how a terror-struck Pakeezah and Faraz are held at gunpoint while they are filmed.

“The incident that took place was not our topic — it was what happened before and after the incident,” explains Kashif. “We did not want to deliver breaking news. We were not glamorising or sensationalising the incident. It is a story about ordinary people, a boy- and a girl-next-door you can relate to. I give credit to Bee Gul for writing the story this way. It is brilliant.”

There are certain lead actors and actresses one usually associates with Kashif Nisar but, in Aik Aur Pakeezah, he opted to work with Sehar Khan and Nameer Khan for the first time. Why?

“Bee Gul, myself and Roshaneh Zafar, founder and managing director of Kashf Foundation, collectively decided on the cast,” he says. “I am glad that I worked with these two new actors. They have refreshing perspectives on their roles and they surprised me with some truly outstanding work.”

Aik Aur Pakeezah’s entire cast, in fact, is in a league of its own. The ensemble also includes Noor ul Hassan, Nadia Afgan, Saqib Sameer, Ali Jan, Ali Aftab Saeed, Davar Mahfooz and Namra Shahid, who mastered the Seraiki language in order to slip into the skin of the village-dwelling Noor Bhari.

‘Mummy’ as a moral compass

Hina Khawaja Bayat, as the incisive Mummy, was the moral compass of the drama.

“She was definitely one of the best characters that I have played,” says Hina. “Bee Gul had thought out the layers of the character so well, and while she was no one’s biological mother, she acted as a maternal figure to so many. She was the writer’s voice, a voice of reason, making comments that would nudge people around her in a particular direction, and make them think about what to do.”

She continues: “Through her own experiences, Mummy was able to relate with and give valuable advice to the women around them. From her stepdaughter becoming a second wife, to Noor Bhari getting abandoned, and Pakeezah getting rejected by her family, Mummy could connect it all with painful episodes of her own life.”

“The power of drama is extensive in Pakistan,” says Kashif Nisar. “If dramas can influence people into changing their wardrobes and styling their hair a certain way, then why not introduce a topic to them as well?”

Making messaging watchable

For Kashf Foundation’s Roshaneh Zafar, the drama has managed to get some very pertinent messages across to a mass audience.

“Hopefully, we have managed to start off multiple conversations,” she says. “Firstly, the drama focuses on victim-blaming, where a certain morality is enforced on a victim and the public becomes judge and jury. And if it is a woman, instead of commiserating with her, the first few questions that people ask are, why did she go there in the first place, or why was she wearing what she was wearing?

“Then, we wanted to raise awareness regarding cybercrime and depict how society looks differently at male and female victims. We wanted the audience to gain more knowledge on what the law says about different issues, such as honour killings, violence against women, divorce and second marriages.”

She adds: “As an organisation committed to women’s empowerment, we want to highlight the importance of having access to justice. At one particular point, Barrister Saman says that, while there are laws to protect women, they are often not implemented because women don’t speak out, silenced by their families or because they associate the crime with shame.”

The Kashf Foundation has now delved into using television dramas to communicate its messages a number of times. Roshaneh explains the process Kashf Foundation adopts in such projects.

“When developing a drama, we always pay very close attention to the script. We work with actual victims and we refer to their real-life stories when we are coming up with concepts for dramas. Once the script is finalised, 80 percent of our work is done.

“Bee Gul, Kashif Nisar and I worked for a long period, just developing the story, and still, when I saw it on screen, even knowing what was going to happen next, the scenes wrung my heart. This drama really turned out to be very special and I feel a sense of internal competition: how are we going to do better than Aik Aur Pakeezah with our next drama?”

Now that, truly, is a challenge. A drama so nuanced, so well-knit, so thought-provoking and yet, in its own way, entertaining, is hard to come by.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, May 3rd, 2026

The movie starts off with Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), who is finally the investigative journalist she dreamed of becoming. She’s about to accept a journalism award when she, along with her entire team, gets fired. Andy proceeds to deliver a speech about the importance of journalism and how the story matters more than the money.

Her speech is a testament to the current state of the media. It’s no longer the over-beautified and glorified early 2000s. Rom-coms from that era sold us a false dream of girlhood and making it as a successful writer. It was simply a tried-and-tested trope that worked at the time.

With the new movie, it’s clear that the trope looks quite different now. The Devil Wears Prada 2 was, on a whole, good. It was fun, nostalgic and exciting to revisit characters and spaces we cherished years ago. Meryl Streep stuns, as always, as Miranda Priestly, although I do think her character was much softer in this film and that she initially seemed to accept her fate in the downfall of Runway.

Stanley Tucci as Nigel is as witty and classy as ever. The movie touched upon the fashion, the conglomerates and the chaos of the industry but still somehow fell short because a sequel is never as good as the original. The plot looks different now and I think the best thing the movie did was comment on the dying media landscape. It hit all the right notes with the fashion, the art, the office space and the cameos, although the score could have been better.

Storytellers versus systems

Whether it was Runway, Poise Magazine (13 Going on 30), Composure (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) or Scarlet (The Bold Type), the early 2000s emerged as the girl boss, glossy magazine era. Today, the media industry (even in rom-coms) looks different.

The Devil Wears Prada built a brand that relied on the expression of bold fashion and luxury, as well as the rise of print media. But now, with part two, there are some realities fiction cannot hide from. Print media has died, leaving editors to create reels and polls, and writers to rely on clicks for their voices to mean something.

In the film, Runway has been digitised and the people behind the magazine are scrambling to hold it together. Finance bros like BJ Novak are now making big decisions for things they don’t know anything about. As Miranda asked in one of my favourite scenes from the movie, what about artistry?

The value society places on storytelling and good journalism has been dying for a while, but beyond that, the movie shows how power has shifted. Even Miranda, someone who has been in the field for years, has a lingering fear of being let go. And that is a clear reflection of the industry today. The stakeholders are different now and the power no longer lies with cultural producers — it lies with corporations.

As Kriti Gupta writes for Refinery29, “The ‘devil’ isn’t Miranda Priestly. It’s the room she’s standing in.”

We ask ourselves now, 20 years after the release of The Devil Wears Prada, how does the world look different? In an age of AI, clickbait journalism, doomscrolling and bed-rotting, people are not reading enough. Listicles rake in the numbers and long-form pieces are left in the dust.

When Andy publishes her first piece as features editor of Runway, she gets some solid feedback from others but Miranda asks a pressing question: “But did people read it?” And that was, in fact, what mattered to her. Even a journalist like Andy, who initially wanted to chase the great American story, began spending her time analysing metrics.

The collapse of feminist media spaces

So many women-run media companies have shut down over the past three years — Gal-dem, Bitch Media, Self Magazine. Refinery29 has been downsizing. Teen Vogue no longer exists. There’s a clear pattern here — feminist publications have been shutting down and shrinking and I don’t think it’s because people don’t read them.

In the age of AI and the finance bro, there seems to be a lack of value people place on publications like these, leading to a loss of independent female voices. I worked at an all-women-run digital media company for years and we housed voices from across the globe, told stories that mattered, but we shut down too. It isn’t that the media industry is dying — it’s that there has been a global shift from community-run spaces to corporate control.

An entire ecosystem is burning to the ground, and we can’t do anything about it because of ‘evolution’ and the patriarchy and the loss of individualism in this age.

The advertising economy

Magazines used to be filled with pages of luxury ads. Advertisers relied heavily on these publications to get word of their products out there. Brands now no longer need to rely on a “middleman” — they run their own ads on social media. Now, we rely on algorithms and there is no longer someone filtering the content we receive. The audience, the readers, never went anywhere, but the power has definitely shifted.

Journalist Harry Cheadle writes, “Digital media companies were attracting their audiences in large part through social media apps and search engines — that audience wasn’t ‘ours’ in any meaningful sense. These platforms gradually realised they wanted to keep people on Instagram or Facebook or the Google results page rather than sending the traffic to publishers.”

In the age of Substack, where Cheadle wrote his essay on the death of the digital media, writers are seeking out spaces to actively put their work out there. Some of that work may have initially existed within publications that have now shut down.

People are still searching for that community that was once created through this fantasy of magazines. But community looks different now. And while the end of The Devil Wears Prada 2 gave us hope, with Miranda still helming Runway, the message about the transformation of the media industry is clear.

The movie isn’t a serious retelling of the industry nor is it supposed to be. It’s just a reminder that we are now living in a solo creator economy. Every industry is shaped by the new generation and maybe it’s time to let go of the fantasy and ground ourselves in reality.

The media industry isn’t really dying, it’s just restructuring.

After more than 70 years of film-making, Attenborough’s instantly recognisable voice is synonymous with the story of ‌nature. He is still at the vanguard of efforts to protect the environment and has produced some of his most impactful work in recent years.

Counting Britain’s royal family, Barack Obama and pop star Billie Eilish among his admirers, Attenborough’s charisma, humour and warmth, alongside the depth of his knowledge and his flair for storytelling, have made him a broadcasting superstar.

“Your ability to communicate the beauty and vulnerability of our natural environment ​remains unequalled,” was how the late Queen Elizabeth summed up his achievements in 2019.

‘Lonesome George’ and the natural environment

Attenborough’s films have communicated the wonder and also the tragedies ​of the natural world to viewers across the globe.

Standout scenes include his encounter with two playful young mountain gorillas who clambered onto him ⁠during his landmark 1979 series Life on Earth.

He also made his audience marvel at the teamwork of a pod of orcas hunting a seal by creating waves to break up ice, ​and his telling in 2012 of the story of Lonesome George, the last surviving Pinta Island tortoise, moved people to tears.

“He’s about 80 years old, and getting a bit creaky in his ​joints – as indeed am I,” Attenborough, then 86, said.

George’s death, two weeks after he was filmed, marked the extinction of his species.

“He’s focused the attention of the world on the fragility of our environment,” Attenborough said at the time.

While Attenborough has topped numerous national popularity polls, being named the country’s most admired man and the greatest living British cultural icon, friends say he rolls his eyes when he is labelled a “national ​treasure”.

“What he feels is that he’s a public servant. He feels that he had the unique opportunity to be the voice for nature, to tell everybody about the wonders of ​nature,” Mike Gunton, a television producer who has worked with Attenborough many times, told Reuters.

As climate change has accelerated and the threat to much of the world has become more urgent, Attenborough devoted much of ‌his 90s ⁠to raising public awareness.

His 2017 blockbuster Blue Planet 2, which highlighted the scourge of plastic in the ocean, achieved some of the highest viewing figures on British television before being sold to broadcasters around the world.

Albatrosses unwittingly feeding their chicks plastic fished from the ocean jolted public opinion and led the British government and major retailers to announce measures to reduce the use of plastics.

“I think every single person who’s seen anything that Sir David has done has been inspired to care about nature,” said Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum in London.

Special BBC broadcasts and events

In Britain, Attenborough’s centenary ​is being marked with a week of ⁠special broadcasts on the BBC, a live concert at the Royal Albert Hall, events at museums, nature walks and tree planting.

The broadcasts include his new series Secret Garden. At 99, he remains heavily involved in programme-making, say BBC colleagues, driven by his enduring curiosity and joy of ​storytelling.

“That’s typical David. He makes everything really enjoyable,” said Mike Salisbury, who has worked as a producer on several Attenborough documentaries.

Born on ​May 8, 1926, Attenborough spent ⁠his childhood collecting fossils, insects and dried seahorses.

His BBC career took off in 1954 when he presented Zoo Quest, which involved him travelling to far-flung parts of the world and bringing animals back to London Zoo.

By the 1970s he had risen to be programme controller at the broadcaster but decided he wanted to return to making nature documentaries.

Screened in 1979 when he was 52, Life on Earth ⁠made him ​a household name. He wrote the entire 13-hour script and travelled the world for three years to tell the ​story of evolution from simple organisms to humans.

Dozens of documentaries followed, including Blue Planet, Frozen Planet and Dynasties. As the decades passed, his sense of the need to act only increased.

“How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say ​I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing?” Attenborough said.

In a lengthy Instagram post, the actor expressed her heartfelt gratitude to many of her team members and praised her co-stars and crew for their performances.

The first message was for fans who had sent their love, support, prayers and stories to the team. “None of this is worth it or possible without you! These stories are from you, for you [and] I hope this story and these characters help you see the light,” Saeed said.

Then she moved on to the show’s writer, Umera Ahmed. The actor said she was grateful to be able to play one of Ahmed’s characters and spread a positive message with the portrayal. “There truly is no writer like you that understands complexed, layered human emotions and relationships. You leave us spellbound and speechless every time,” the actor said.

She thanked director Meesam Naqvi for bringing out the vulnerability in her and making her character so endearing to the audience. “Zeba wouldn’t exist without your immaculate direction,” she said.

Saeed’s co-lead Emmad Irfani got a nod for making acting choices that let her character shine and Hasan Khan — who plays her unrequited love and eventual second husband — was told that his “honesty, freshness and kindness won hearts instantly”.

Coming to the cast of young actors who played her kids, she called Aashir Wajahat a “hero” she would like to work with again and said the girls who star opposite him in future projects will be “lucky”. “It was such a treat to share space with you and to watch you play out Subuk. May you always remain this grounded, genuine and passionate.”

She said Hania Ahmed was “a natural” with her acting and Haya Khan left her “impressed” with her ability to pull off difficult scenes. She also wished Nooray Zeeshan the best after her second big show, hoping the young star continues working on important projects like Kafeel.

Areeka Haq was told she should cast her doubts aside and act more because, “You were so so fun to watch. I loved your character because of how you played her.” Saeed went on to say, “I think everyone wants to see more of you now!”

She also thanked Mariam Ansari for agreeing to do this project and said she was “phenomenal” in her role. “You brought so much warmth and grace to Sumaira… You made her so memorable.”

Saeed also shared words of appreciation for the actors who played her family on the show, Munazzah Arif, Kashif Mahmood, Momina Bajwa and Abdullah Khan Niazi. “You all made our family feel so genuine and close knit. I can’t imagine anyone else playing your parts.”

The star had messaged for the production team, whom she thanked for their hard work and efficiency in the project. She also said it was “a pleasure doing business with” producers Fahad Mustafa and Dr Ali Kazmi.

The actor thanked her makeup artist Sajid Wahab for being “my tailor on set, my babysitter, my biggest cheerleader and my magician” and also makeup assistant Saif.

Costume designer Tabeer Abid also got a shoutout for her positive energy on set, “creating an authentic style board for all of us and making every character more believable”.

Kafeel received critical praise for its portrayal of a dysfunctional family and how parents’ mental health troubles impact their children. Saeed was especially lauded for her role as Zeba, the initially burdened mother who reclaims her life towards the end of the show.

Roughly translated as someone who is mischievous or meddling, the term sharpasand barely does justice to Farasat because he is much more than that. He is intrusive, calculating, dishonest and manipulative — a man who interferes, schemes and consistently causes more damage than good all under the guise of someone who is moralistic and religious. He is married to Ruby (Nadia Afghan) and has three children — two daughters and a son — two of whom are reflections of him. 

At the beginning of the drama, a couple moves into the neighbourhood: Sanam (Hareem Farooq) and Fida (Affan Waheed). Farasat is quick to butt into their lives, and is successful as Fida is not particularly bright and is gullible enough to fall prey to Farasat’s machinations. Fida’s inability to see through him becomes central to the drama, making him the perfect target for Farasat’s manipulation. Sanam, meanwhile, is smarter and sees through Farasat. What adds to the deterioration of their marriage is the fact that the couple is unable to conceive.

Another important character is Shazmain (Hira Mani), a widow who lives alone and holds an important position at a bank. She quickly befriends Sanam and she too is one of the few people who sees through Farasat’s guise to the sleaziness beneath the surface. Unsurprisingly, Farasat badmouths her in the neighbourhood, painting her as an immoral woman who entertains men. The sheer ease with which this accusation spreads is both disturbing and, frustratingly, still relevant in this day and age.

Another household in this interconnected mohalla belongs to Begum Ali (also referred to as Shagufta), played by Seemi Pasha. She is a widow with two children: Wali (her son, played by Ahsan Afzal Khan) and Hafsa (her daughter, played by Sabahat Sheikh). Then there is Shama and her son Hammad (Hassam Khan), whose lives become entangled in the larger emotional web of the drama.

And then, of course, there is the soap element — because SharPasand is definitely a soap. Emaan, Naumaan Ijaz’s daughter, is in love with Hammad; Hammad, meanwhile, is connected to Hafsa; and Hafsa herself is emotionally tied to him as well. Wali meanwhile is the love interest of Farasat’s other daughter Minahil. Without giving away too much, Farasat, his wife Ruby, and to an extent his children, actively work to ensure that Hammad and Hafsa are not able to get married. At the same time, Farasat preys on Fida’s insecurities and slowly attempts to break apart Sanam and Fida’s already fragile marriage.

What follows is a tangled web of lies, deceit, emotional manipulation, and constant interference — all stretched across 52 (!) episodes. At that length, forward movement often feels extremely slow.

However, the drama does bring to the fore several important issues. It touches upon the way women are treated, whether married or widowed, and how easily their reputations can be controlled or destroyed by social perception. It also highlights the power — and danger — of uploading videos and how quickly they circulate within mohallas. Though, admittedly, it becomes slightly hard to believe that certain videos shared within the neighbourhood can suddenly become “viral” and cause a myriad of consequences, including suicide. Some of these transitions feel underdeveloped or unconvincingly handled, leaving certain story arcs underexplained.

Despite these misgivings, the performances largely save the drama. Ijaz, Afghan, Farooq and Mani all stand out, bringing weight and conviction to their roles. What is particularly interesting is that you end up not fully hating the villainous characters, despite their vile acts. 

Another strength of SharPasand lies in its refusal to flatten its characters into stereotypes. There is a noticeable lack of rigid gender stereotyping. Not all men are toxic — some are weak, some are foolish, and some are vulnerable. Similarly, not all women are portrayed as helpless or weepy — some are strong, some are intelligent, and some are emotionally complex. 

The way the stories interweave also keeps the drama watchable. Even when individual arcs falter, the interconnectedness of the neighbourhood ensures that something is always happening. 

However, there are moments of inconsistency that are hard to ignore. At times, continuity errors are quite obvious. For instance, a character claims she needs to go somewhere urgently in the middle of the night, yet when she opens the door of her house, sunlight seeps in. In another instance, a man arrives at his home’s exterior wearing a shirt, but in the next shot, he is suddenly wearing a coat indoors. These details might seem small, but in this day and age they are jarring, especially given the higher budgets of such dramas.

Still, despite these flaws, SharPasand manages to hold attention for the most part. It remains engaging, even when it is repetitive or stretched. The narrative momentum may falter at points, but the performances and interpersonal dynamics keep it afloat. And there’s always the option to fast forward!

The ending, however, feels almost deliberately cynical. Bad people do not necessarily get what they deserve, and people’s natures do not really change. There is no neat moral resolution. Instead, the drama leans into something more uncomfortable — the idea that interference, manipulation, and emotional damage often linger without clear consequences.

But then again, perhaps that’s a truer reflection of society — although it may not be the best for the moral police and those who believe that good always triumphs over evil.

New rules include a requirement that only real, live human performers, and not their AI avatars, are eligible for the film world’s biggest prizes, and screenplays must have been penned by a person, rather than a chatbot.

“In the acting category, only roles credited in the film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent will be considered eligible,” the Academy said.

The ruling comes days after an AI version of the late Val Kilmer was unveiled to an audience of cinema owners, a year after the Top Gun star’s death.

A youthful, digital version of Kilmer appeared in the trailer for archaeological action pic As Deep as the Grave, telling another character: “Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me.”

The project was created with the enthusiastic support of the actor’s family, who granted access to Kilmer’s video archives, which were used to recreate the actor at multiple stages of his life.

Originally published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2026

Diana: The Unheard Truth, set for release in 2027 — 30 years after her death in a Paris car crash — promises to tell the story of “the people’s princess” in her own words.

Using five hours of conversations between Diana and her close confidante, surgeon Dr. James Colthurst, the tapes formed the basis of Andrew Morton’s explosive 1992 book Diana: Her True Story. “This revelatory three-part docuseries restores authorship of one of the most scrutinized lives in modern history,” said a statement released Thursday by Love Monday TV, the production company behind the venture.

It “will change public perception of Diana forever.” “Through the tapes, we come to know a resilient, perceptive, and relatable young woman, finding herself in the brightest of global spotlights, and navigating the challenges with grace, self-awareness, and determination.” Diana’s role in Britain’s storied monarchy is unparalleled.

Originally published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2026

Saman Kamraan premiered her experimental short film The Bed She Made at BISFF on April 24 as part of a showcase of five films by Asian directors dealing with “corrosive forces often embedded within social structures”. It is the only Pakistani film to play at the festival this year. It follows Ali Sohail Jarua’s Murder Tongue screened at the festival in 2022.

Her film shines a light on global warming, overpopulation and a possible link between the two. Exploring the danger of rising temperatures to male and female reproductive health in Pakistan, the film asks if this may be nature’s way of correcting a man-made imbalance.

With a mix of environmental research, anti-natalist philosophy, and the symbolism of the bed as both a biological and cultural site, the film poses a question to the audience: is declining fertility a crisis, a consequence or a correction?

Festival programmer Professor Sébastien Simon described the film for the BISFF catalogue. “Through its interplay of grace and violence, this metaphorical and highly symbolic film alternates between choreographic sequences and stark depictions of domestic oppression. By turning personal suffering into embodied outcry, it confronts the systemic silencing and abusive treatment of women in rigid patriarchal societies.”

Other works in the showcase included Samu The Terrible and His Sin from Indonesia, Central Asian entries The Mayor’s Daughter and The Seventh Month and Thailand’s Lost in Mekong.

While The Bed She Made was the only Pakistani film to make it to BISFF this year, multiple short and feature films have made their mark at festivals recently. In April, the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles recognised Lali, Ghost School and Permanent Guest with Honorary Mentions.

Ghost School will be joining Mera Lyari — Pakistan’s semi-official response to Dhurandhar — and W.R.A.P at the UK Asian Film Festival from May 1 to 10.

We have been taught to consume such stories as masala — something to cry over and then forget once the next episode airs. But what if I told you that millions of viewers are not just watching the protagonists Jami (Emmad Irfani) and Zeba (Sanam Saeed)? They are watching their own fathers, their own mothers and echoes of their childhood selves. Kafeel is not a drama; it is a mirror of the dysfunctional family system hiding in plain sight across our homes.

At its core lies one narcissistic, self-absorbed, and irresponsible father — Jami. His emotional unavailability isn’t passive; it’s destructive. He doesn’t just make mistakes, he weaponises irresponsibility. His wife Zeba, a victimised mother trapped in learned helplessness, becomes the silent enabler. Together, they create a pressure cooker that warps each of their four children in profoundly different ways. From parentification to phobias, from internalised guilt to behavioural mimicry — let’s take a mental health deep dive into Kafeel.

The father – Jami (The malignant source)

Jami is the epicentre of the family’s pathology. He perfectly fits the archetype of the “covert narcissist” — lazy, entitled, deeply insecure, yet charming in public. His gaslighting is textbook: he blames Zeba for his own failures and makes her feel responsible for his inability to work and provide for his family. He doesn’t need to be physically violent; his emotional and financial abuse is enough to trap and damage the entire family.

But here is the nuance Kafeel bravely offers: Jami himself did not emerge from a vacuum. His own patterns are the result of a dysfunctional family setup that he was born into. His siblings used him as a caretaker for their ageing parents, while they provided financial support from abroad. He was never pushed to complete his education or pursue a career and this turned him into an entitled, stunted adult. This does not excuse his behaviour — but it explains it, which is the first step away from blind hatred and towards breaking cycles.

The mother – Zeba (the victim and the enabler)

Sanam Saeed’s portrayal of Zeba is heartbreaking because she plays her character not as weak, but as exhausted. Zeba was conditioned to be ‘sweet, obedient and naïve’ and her silence is not passive — it’s a trauma response called learned helplessness. After years of being oppressed, she has given up fighting back. Her decision to stay with Jami “for the children” is the very thing that damages them the most.

Yet Kafeel offers a quiet, powerful arc: her midlife enlightenment. This makes sense, as midlife is often when early-life trauma knocks again, begging to be resolved. Zeba’s slow awakening is a gift to every woman watching Kafeel who still believes it is too late for her.

The four wounded children – A psychological breakdown

Each child is a unique case study of how a child adapts to survive a narcissistic, abusive parent. It’s a masterclass in the ripple effects of a dysfunctional family system.

The eldest son – Subuk (Aashir Wajahat): the parentified child

Subuk was forced to grow up overnight and become the emotional and financial support his mother needed and the father figure his sisters lacked. His low self-esteem doesn’t come from failure but from the immense pressure of holding a broken family together. This is called role reversal trauma — and it often follows children into adulthood in the form of chronic anxiety, an inability to relax and a compulsive need to fix everyone around them. No one in the drama ever tells him that he is just a child or that he shouldn’t have to carry such a burden.

The eldest daughter – Javeria (Nooray Zeeshan): the blame sponge

Javeria has learned that the only way to feel safe is to over-control herself and take responsibility for everything. She blames herself for the family’s fights, financial problems and even her father’s moods. This is a classic survival mechanism: if she can fix what’s ‘wrong’, maybe the chaos will stop. She becomes a people-pleaser with zero self-worth — hallmark signs of growing up with a volatile, unpredictable parent. In therapy, we see Javerias everywhere: brilliant, kind women who apologise for existing and believe that love is something they must earn through suffering.

The middle sister – Zoya (Haya Khan): confident but phobic

Zoya shows us how trauma can become somatised — locked into the body’s nervous system. Her fear of sharp objects (aichmophobia) is not irrational; it is a conditioned response to her father, who threatens the family with a knife frequently. Her confidence is a mask. Underneath, her body remembers the terror. This is one of Kafeel’s most brilliant threads: trauma does not always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like a strong, sharp, seemingly put-together daughter who cannot hold a kitchen knife without her pulse skyrocketing.

The youngest daughter – Tania (Hania Ahmed) — the mimic

The youngest child is the most chilling example of how abuse normalises pathology. Tania has learned that, in this family, there are no real consequences for bad behaviour, because her father models it daily. By using “my father does it too” as an excuse, she is not being inherently manipulative; she is mirroring the survival tactic she has observed. If the most powerful person in the house can get away with anything, why can’t she? This behaviour is a learned adaptation to a dysfunctional environment, and it highlights the danger of normalising toxic traits. Without intervention, Tania is at the highest risk of becoming like Jami in her future relationships — not because she is evil, but because she associates power with this way of being.

Intergenerational trauma

One of the most upsetting moments in the series is when we see Subuk begin to mimic his father’s aggressive behaviour. In that moment, we see the future. The abused becomes the abuser. The drama masterfully shows that, without intervention, children will carry their parents’ patterns into their own relationships, perpetuating the cycle for another generation.

This is why Kafeel is so important. It is not just a story; it is a warning. It is a call for self-awareness, for breaking the cycle and for prioritising mental health over societal pressure. We cannot heal what we refuse to name.

But here is the truth that Kafeel doesn’t show — or hasn’t yet — because dramas rarely do: the cycle can be broken. A narcissistic father does not have to define your future. A victimised mother does not have to be your blueprint. Parentification, guilt, phobias and mimicry are adaptations, not life sentences. With the right support — therapy, self-awareness and healthy boundaries — each of these wounded children can reclaim their mental health.

Intergenerational trauma is powerful, but not necessarily a destiny. Healing begins by naming the wound and choosing to stop passing it down. Kafeel warns us, but your life can prove that your story ends differently.

Why Kafeel is essential viewing

Kafeel is not a drama; it’s a psychological case study disguised as entertainment. It shows that abuse is rarely just a slap. It is the slow, silent erosion of a person’s will, and the insidious poisoning of the next generation.

This drama is a mirror for every household where one broken parent created four differently broken children. Kafeel exposes the mental health legacy of a toxic father. It forces us to ask a difficult question: how many of our “family dramas” are actually multi-generational trauma centres?

None of this analysis would be possible without the bravery of writer Umera Ahmed, the brilliance of director Meesam Naqvi, and the courage of ARY Digital for airing this raw and uncomfortable story. Mainstream Pakistani dramas often romanticise toxic relationships or resolve complex trauma with a single emotional scene. Kafeel refuses to take that shortcut. It trusts its audience to sit with the messiness, to recognise the subtle signs of narcissistic abuse and to understand that healing doesn’t happen in one episode.

This is not just good television. This is responsible storytelling. And it deserves recognition.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, April 26th, 2026

Pakistani projects displayed at IFFLA included Sarmad Khoosat’s Lali and Seemab Gul’s Ghost School, both of which bagged mentions from the grand jury in the feature film category.

Sana Jafri’s Permanent Guest was also part of the programme, scoring similar success among short films.

Lali — Sarmad Khoosat

The dark comedy follows Zeba (Mamya Shajaffar), newly married to Sajawal (Channan Hanif), a man-child whose insecurities quickly metastasise into paranoia. Zeba enters the marriage already burdened by gossip and superstition: three previous suitors have died in strange, unsettling circumstances, earning her the reputation of a cursed bride.

The film made headlines in February as the first film at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival made entirely by a Pakistani cast and crew.

According to its official synopsis, Lali “examines the fear, shame, and violence that lie beneath intimate relationships,” confronting the suppressed forces that suffocate many unions.

Ghost School — Seemab Gul

Pakistan’s second entry focused on the many schools abandoned throughout rural areas of the country due to administrative neglect.

The story is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Rabia, who defies superstition and bureaucracy to uncover why her school abruptly closed. Untangling eerie rumours, corrupt local power and silence, she undertakes a solitary and courageous search for truth and justice.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September and was praised as a female story told by female filmmaker. “My themes dictate my characters,” the director said at the time, “Ghost School is a character-driven film.”

Permanent Guest — Sana Jafri

The last film, a short exploring the lingering effects of childhood sexual abuse within South Asian households, is connected to both the features it stood alongside in one way or another.

The film is set in Lahore, where 26-year-old Fatin and her mother Yasmeen are preparing for a neighbourhood wedding. Their plans are disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Shabeer, Fatin’s 70-year-old uncle. Fatin is uncomfortable with Shabeer’s visit, but her parents expect her to care for him, including driving him to his doctors’ appointments. Tensions rise during their interactions, and Fatin struggles to balance her duty to her family with the weight of an unspoken history.

Permanent Guest premiered at TIFF alongside Ghost School and Jafri — who wrote and directed it — was one of the producers for Khoosat’s earlier film Joyland. Rasti Farooq, who stars in the short, also played a role in both Lali and Joyland.

This underage casting trend recalibrates how Pakistani audiences view girlhood and its possibilities. Girls are being written into marriages and emotionally difficult relationships in unequal dynamics. Many TV series depict young girls playing adult roles; instead of casting them as adolescents navigating education, identity, or friendships, these series show girls as marriageable adults, romantic interests, wives, and emotional anchors. They compress, accelerate, and ultimately erase girlhood, both narratively and socially.

At first glance, this trend is just an extension of long-standing tropes and casting trends. It’s no surprise that young women have always been sexualised, commodified, and cast opposite much older men. Audiences have been conditioned to like young female actors. Pakistani TV has also historically relied on narratives of young, naïve, pliable girls paired with older, ‘more mature’ men.

These dramas frequently position the teenage heroine as both childlike and romantically desirable, or childlike hence desirable. However, what makes this recent trend more problematic is not simply the age gap — it’s the narrative insistence that these girls are ready for adulthood, that they can and should seamlessly transition into marriage and motherhood. This girl, this heroine is simultaneously someone to be dismissed, guided, disciplined, and ultimately possessed.

This trend is particularly concerning in a country where public discourse around women’s right to education, work, access to public spaces, and choosing a life partner is already very contentious.

Amid the ongoing debates over gender-based rights and responsibilities in Pakistan, this trend both normalises the adultification of girls, ie the premature attribution of adult roles and responsibilities to young girls, and also conditions the audience to accept it.

This adultification operates alongside implicit sexualisation of girls. Girls are not only expected to behave like grown women but are also consistently framed as desirable and thereby marriageable within adult romantic economies. It is critical to remember that violence against women in Pakistan often occurs because men believe that women should be available to them romantically, or because men insist that women should be available for marriage, or because men expect that women should unconditionally perform their gendered responsibilities as assigned to them by the patriarchy.

What happens when men watch the romanticised reassurances of the same beliefs and expectations on their TV screens? What happens when young girls watch romanticised versions of these patriarchal beliefs and fantasies portrayed as girls’ success on their TVs?

Meem Se Mohabbat, P Se Problem

Let’s look at Meem Se Mohabbat, starring Dananeer Mobeen and Ahad Raza Mir. Roshi is introduced as a chulbuli, clumsy girl who, in the first episode, fails her Bachelors of Engineering admission test. Based on this, she is presumably 17 to 19 years old. Yet, by the last episode, the same teenager is married to her boss, who is a successful businessman and a divorced father of a five to six-year-old son with a speaking disability. During her journey from an intern to boss’s wife, the story problematises this age gap.

At one point, the boss’s girlfriend accuses Roshi and says, “Tum apni kam-umri ka faida utha ker Talha Ahmed ko hasil kernay ko koshish ker rahi ho (you are trying to use your youth to get Talha Ahmed).” The boss, Talha, describes her as a “gher zimadar, immature, aur kam-umer larki (irresponsible, immature and underage girl).” On the surface, this attention to their age gap highlights that the relationship is inappropriate.

However, the narrative also uses it to infantilise Roshi, to show that she needs a caretaker. The drama ultimately resolves this tension of their age gap — not by challenging or undoing the romantic relationship — but by romanticising it.

Not only does the series romanticise and neutralise their age gap, but it also declares Roshi responsible for this romantic resolution. In the last episode, she incredulously says to the boss, “aap ne mujhse kahan shadi kerni thi (since when did you want to marry me)?” and he responds “tumahri zidd aur mohabbat jeet gai (your stubbornness and love won).”

The series shows that the boss married the intern only because of her persistence, ignoring that he makes Roshi’s fiancé disappear on their wedding day to ‘save’ her and marries her himself. Young Roshi’s zidd or stubbornness is framed as triumphant, while the man’s hesitation due to the age gap is recast as his moral conscientiousness.

Focus on her triumphant zidd creates the illusion of Roshi’s agency, and it absolves the boss of any wrongdoing. The drama rewards the young intern by endowing both wifehood and motherhood on her. This pairing of a young girl with an older man reinforces a model of heterosexual desire, one that privileges male authority and female youth. The drama becomes a reassurance of this male desire because it first problematises, then normalises, and eventually romanticises this desire for the audience.

Meem Se Mohabbat also maternalises the young girl. It links her desirability to her capacity for care, her potential for motherhood. Many of the romantic moments between the couple occur when Roshi interacts with her boss’s son. Instead of showing her as an adult with the child, due to Roshi’s childlikeness and her age, they appear to be children of different ages. And somehow, many of these scenes are followed by the boss romantically gazing at her.

The boss also goes on to threaten Roshi that if something were to happen to his son, he would hold her responsible. Mind you, the girl couldn’t even take care of herself at the start of the series. He himself appears to be failing at taking care of his child. But he shifts his own failure as a father onto the girl before they are even married.

Kafeel’s entirely too quiet feminism

Let’s also look at Kafeel, starring Sanam Saeed and Emmad Irfani, which is a women’s rights-oriented drama. Zeba’s parents suspect she is having an affair, so they quickly marry her off to the first available man, Jami. She is not allowed to even complete her education. After she’s married, she learns that her husband is unemployed, irresponsible, and disloyal to her.

Her father encourages her to get a divorce, but other women, including her mother and grandmother, push against it. Zeba becomes the sole bread earner in her household and raises her three daughters and a son without any financial or emotional support from her husband.

But Zeba, seemingly, does not learn much from her own experience as a woman in a financially and emotionally abusive marriage. Instead of teaching her daughters the importance of financial autonomy, she hopes that they will marry up. The sole aspiration she shares for her eldest daughter is a good husband, big kitchen, and a big house after marriage.

Zeba’s sister is a successful architect and lives in a palatial house that she designed with her husband. But instead of actively modelling her to highlight the possibility of financial autonomy along with a successful marriage, the drama reduces her to a minor character.

Many episodes focus on the eldest daughter Javeria’s marriage and use it as a tool to highlight the problems they face due to their father. Zeba’s daughters’ friend, Daneen’s whole character is based on her desire to marry Zeba’s son, Subuk. Daneen is a school-going girl and is shown wearing a school (or perhaps a college) uniform in the drama. Even inside the school, the topic of conversation is her marriage with Subuk. We never learn much about these girls beyond their own or their mothers’ desires about their marriages.

We never learn what any of these girls study, what their interests are, or what their career aspirations are. Though both their mother and aunt are working women, instead of learning about the importance of financial autonomy, the daughters are shown to hope for a more responsible husband for their chances at a life better than their mother’s. It reduces young girls to dependents awaiting marriage, without ever assigning them complete personhood.

Within the plot, there is an internal contradiction: the series that aims to highlight women’s rights ends up centring teenage girls in marriage plots, making its own message ambiguous. It feeds into the widely-believed idea of daughter as a liability, a responsibility, a burden. The series gestures toward themes of women’s empowerment — showing, for instance, a mother who gains independence through employment and secures a khula. Yet this lesson is not extended to the daughters.

This reflects a broader pattern of feminist façade in television, where dramas flippantly acknowledge feminist ideas but rarely integrate them into their storylines. They create the appearance of feminist engagement without a substantive shift in narrative priorities.

By framing early marriage as romantic or inevitable, these dramas also make limited access to education, economic dependency, gender-based violence, and legal vulnerabilities seem inescapable. By collapsing adolescence into adulthood, these TV series actively reshape the boundaries of girlhood.

Many of these female actors presumably come from the upper-middle class, and are academically and professionally ambitious, as any young girls should be. But, ironically, their work provides the Pakistani public reassurances of regressive patriarchal beliefs. At a time when feminists are challenging early marriages, advocating for women’s education, and demanding greater autonomy for women in Pakistan, the persistent portrayal of teenage girls as wives and mothers strengthens the barriers keeping women down.

This trend suggests that, despite the changing discourse, the fundamental expectations placed on girls remain the same.

These series also shape the aesthetic orientations of the audience as they get used to seeing girls in adult roles, and thereby age out senior female actors. Female actors have always faced this gendered ageism and often share how their professional prospects dwindle or become limited while their male counterparts continue to play heroes.

Comments on female actors’ social media posts are often ageist. Recently, in an interview, Firdous Jamal defined a heroine as a “15 to 16-year-old, or at maximum 18 to 20-year-old girl” who is “chulbuli”, “chanchal”, “innocent” and “excites the audience”.

Unsurprisingly, the actor playing the eldest daughter in Kafeel, Nooray Zeeshan, is 16 years old. She shared that she was offered multiple roles because she looks ‘innocent’. This casting practice eliminates or limits the possibility of work for female actors after a certain age. Patriarchies have always prized women’s innocence and naiveté and underage casting exacerbates this. Teenagers are the desired target of both patriarchy and capitalism: young enough to be moulded, old enough to be sexualised and commodified.

In centring teenage girls in adult roles on screen, these dramas offer both a reassurance and a continued fantasy to their male audience, of a world where young girls remain available to older men, where girls remain financially and emotionally dependent, hence exploitable.

For the female audience, these dramas romanticise the misconception that their value lies in their youth, their innocence, and their marriageability. But this reassurance and romanticisation comes at a cost that girls and women continue to pay for everyone’s entertainment.

In a post on X on Sunday, the chief minister said the 50-acre space aims to bring “the glory of filmmaking back to Lahore and Punjab”.

Maryam said the project had been conceived almost two years ago and involved “continuous consultations with filmmakers, producers and actors.

Listing the facilities being built as part of the complex, she said it would have “world-class studios and sound stages” with “advanced VFX and post-production labs”. A purpose-built convention hall is planned to host events and an integrated trade hub will be built to facilitate business.

A film and music school will be established on-site to train new artists and musicians, along with a number of backlots and a central lake for filmmakers to use as sets. The facility will also have dedicated emergency response infrastructure.

The chief minister said the Punjab Film City will reduce reliance on foreign production services, and in doing so, it will “empower local talent, create thousands of jobs and position Pakistan as a global hub for creative excellence”.

She said her vision was to “transform Punjab into a global destination for technology, innovation, heritage and culture” and called the project “a gift to our youth and artists”.

Information and Culture Minister Azma Bokhari also shed light on the government’s initiatives to revive Punjab’s waning film industry on Sunday, detailing plans to disburse funds for film production.

She said 32 individuals had been selected to receive Rs30 million each for their projects, with half the amount released at script submission and the other half at their film’s completion. The filmmakers will be given a year for these projects.

Applications for a second batch of filmmakers will open in June and special funds have been set aside for five exceptionally talented young individuals.

Another project being undertaken by the government is the transition of cinemas to solar energy in an effort to reduce their operating costs and provide relief to cinema owners.

Bokhari emphasised these initiatives aim to promote creativity in Punjab and enable the local film industry to compete at the international level.

He made the remarks while discussing the state of the country’s entertainment industry on the show Rise & Shine on Friday.

He was asked whether he would want to work with the actors, both of whom lead major production houses. The Bullah star said there was always something to learn from working with other actors and both Saeed and Mustafa were great in what they do, but they preferred to “live in their own Disney world”.

Earlier during the episode, he said he believes budgets behind Pakistani film had grown but minds hadn’t, which is why he prefers to do Punjabi films over Urdu ones.

The actor said films today had become a game of numbers rather than art. “Everyone says ‘I made Rs2 billion’ and ‘I made Rs6 billion,’ but we never see any new projects starting. Bullah [Shahid’s most recently released film] showed you can make a film in Rs70 million or Rs80 million and make up to Rs260 million from it in a matter of 20 days. What we wanted to show was that the real substance behind a film is the mind, not the budget.”

He said that’s what he really loved about Punjabi cinema — they never had budgets but Punjabi audiences enjoy a good movie even to this day.

Host Nadia Khan asked Shahid if there was a chance he would do a project with some of his old co-stars, like Reema or Saima Noor. He said it should happen, but there were certain divides in the industry that prevented this. “Everyone has their own area, they rule over it like their personal kingdom — that shouldn’t happen. Things like art, entertainment, politics, wealth and opportunity should flow freely throughout the country.” He said it was “very sad” to see the divide between Karachi and Lahore specifically.

He also talked about how success is measured in likes as opposed to talent these days, which has taken a wrecking ball to the standard of content in the industry. “This is fake and because it is fake, nobody seems to care about the actual content they’re putting out… So much of social media is politicised, whatever isn’t is full of stupidity. People who can’t sing are singing, people who aren’t funny are doing comedy.”

Khan and her co-host Zohaib Hassan also asked the actor about his latest project Psycho and his work with Meera. He said he was more than happy to work with a woman who wanted to hone her craft and her career because that’s what he’d seen his mother doing when he was a child.

When he was asked about a recent interview where Meera was asked inappropriate questions about her personal life, Shahid said the interview made him “lose faith in intellectualism and journalism”. He said it was sad to see that we can’t question authority and instead choose to kick people when they’re down. “That’s not morality.”

The actor agreed with Hassan that it was “principally wrong to ask questions ‘below the belt’” and said there was a line between entertainment journalism and the questioning reserved for political and investigative journalism, which needs to be adhered to.

He also criticised film producers for inflating the costs of making films and creating a barrier for new entrants. Shahid said the success of films should be pushing the industry to expand, which is not something he sees happening.

Hassan also asked the actor what he thought about his contemporaries working in India and how people used to say collaborating with Bollywood would revive our own entertainment industry.

He said he never agreed with the idea, insisting India would treat Pakistani actors like they did Pakistani cricket. “They utilise you however they want and then cast you aside.”

Shahid asked where everyone who insisted that “artists have no borders” was now that India had closed their border. “You have your kingdom here, people love you, why would you go play a side role in someone else’s court?”

The actor did, however, insist that his views on cross-border collaboration were his own and he encouraged others to see what best suits them. “Who am I to stop anybody?” he asked.