A source confirmed to the magazine that Styles and Zoë shared the news with a small circle of people and the actor was even showing off her engagement ring among friends.

The pair have been dating since at least August, when they were spotted together at a restaurant in London. At the time, Zoë was promoting her film Caught Stealing.

Rumours of the couple’s engagement were sparked last week, when The Sun posted pictures of the pair in London. Alongside merch from Styles’ new album, she was spotted wearing a large diamond ring.

The singer-actor duo has been spotted together repeatedly during their eight-month courtship, especially in Rome, where the couple enjoys being left “pretty much alone”, according to People.

They’ve also had lunch with Zoë’s father, musician Lenny Kravitz. “Friends of Lenny say he is very protective of Zoë, but it really seemed like he enjoyed meeting Harry,” a source told the magazine at the time. “From what people could tell, he thought Harry was polite, down to earth and genuinely interested in getting to know the family.”

According to the source, those close to the Hunger Games star know “Lenny has always wanted Zoë to be with someone who respects her, and it looked like he felt Harry does. They were laughing a lot at lunch, and it came across that Lenny appreciated Harry’s sense of humour. He likes when someone can keep things light.”

This is the actor’s second engagement, after she got engaged to actor Karl Glusman in October of 2018 and married him in June 2019. The pair split over a year later, with their divorce being finalised in August 2021.

While we don’t have a wedding date yet, Zoë plans to join her now-fiancé on his lengthy residency tour in support of his album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. The tour will start in May and run through much of the year, with seven stops across the US, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands.

In a story on Instagram, she reacted to a video about the incident, asking why it wasn’t being reported on and what was being done to rescue them.

Anjum was also worried about the crew, especially one member he said “is like a brother to me”. He claimed the government “has taken no action” in a series of stories posted on his Instagram account.

He said he was “ashamed” as a Pakistani at the government’s “non seriousness” and “under the rug policy” when it came to its citizens trapped abroad. He pleaded for authorities to “wake up and bring them home”.

Farooq expressed disbelief at the incident, asking who people should go to for justice in a crisis like this.

The vessel “Owner 25” was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden last week and its crew — which includes the Indonesian captain alongside Pakistani sailors — has been held hostage ever since.

The foreign ministry is in contact with the government of Somalia about the incident and is taking part in a collaborative effort with the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, the Pakistan Navy and other stakeholders to secure the release of the Pakistani citizens.

Sindh Governor Syed Muhammad Nehal Hashmi met family members of the Pakistani hostages on Monday and assured them both the provincial and federal governments stood with them in this trying time.

He said communication with the kidnapped Pakistanis remained intact and efforts for their safe recovery were ongoing at all levels.

Hooria’s spread featured a shawarma platter as the appetiser, chicken kabsa — a rice dish — as the main course and a non-alcoholic champagne as the accompanying beverage. What drew me to it was the orderly, methodical layout — her spread displayed separately from the other students’ set-ups, each dish accompanied by a handwritten recipe card in colourful markers.

“It was a group activity, in which we were assigned to prepare an appetiser, a main course item and a beverage,” Hooria tells Eos. “As I’m new at COTHM and don’t know my coursemates well, I opted to go solo.”

Hooria may be new at COTHM but she is not new to cooking. She loves to cook and has been doing it since she was 12 years old. It began with a sweet tooth — and the desserts she made because of it. “Everyone at home liked them, which encouraged me to go further,” she recalls.

A young trainee chef prepares an Arab feast…

Then came a time when she took over the responsibility of cooking dinner from her mother. Hooria says that her mother, an exceptional cook herself, gave her free rein, though she never left her alone in the kitchen. Soon, Hooria told her family about her plan to train as a professional chef.

“Everyone at home said I did not need to, because I already knew how to cook,” she says. She countered that she wanted to work as a chef at a restaurant or hotel, or even open her own restaurant someday. “For that, I require a degree or diploma, and the kind of hands-on training that I could never get in my home kitchen,” she points out.

It was this dream that led her to COTHM and to the Karachi Expo Centre on that day, where I asked her about her choice of dishes, especially the non-alcoholic champagne.

She says that she wanted it on her menu because it’s a celebratory drink and “sounds kind of grand.” She explains that, being a Muslim, she has never tasted the drink nor served the standard alcoholic version. “Instead, I have tried to make a non-alcoholic variant.”

She was happy to share how each dish came together.

Non-alcoholic champagne

To make the champagne, Hooria pours one litre of chilled apple juice into a large glass pitcher and squeezes the fresh juice of a lemon over it, before adding about one cup of orange pulp. She allows it to sit in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes for the flavours to infuse.

Having read that champagne is fizzy and somewhat acidic to the throat, Hooria uses chilled sparkling water and a clear lemon/lime soft drink soda in equal quantities (one litre of each) to pour over the apple juice (to sweeten and round out the soda base), lemon juice and orange pulp concoction. She adds a handful of crushed mint leaves and lots of ice to the concoction before serving.

Shawarma appetiser

For the shawarma, Hooria made the pitta bread from scratch. The young chef adds a teaspoon each of yeast and sugar with warm water to activate the yeast before adding in the all-purpose flour and a tablespoon of cooking oil to make a soft dough. She covers the dough and leaves it to double in size before dividing it into small balls, flattening each into a pitta with a rolling pin and roasting on a griddle.

For the filling, Hooria cuts boneless chicken into julienne strips and marinates them for 45 minutes in the juice of one lemon and a quarter teaspoon of paprika, black pepper, white pepper and a pinch of garam masala [mix of ground spices] powder, with salt according to taste.

She cooks the chicken in a frying pan with a tablespoon of oil, then assembles it inside the folded pitta bread with lots of cucumber and tomato slices.

Chicken kabsa

Chicken kabsa is a rice dish popular in Saudi Arabia, where cooking tends to favour mild, fragrant spices over hot ones. It resembles the South Asian pulao in appearance but has a method of its own.

Hooria begins by frying onions in oil, then adds the chicken and whole garam masala before pouring in water to make the broth. Once the chicken has cooked through, she removes it from the broth and fries it separately — this is what sets kabsa apart, giving the chicken a golden colour and a slight crispiness rather than the softness it would have if left to sit.

The rice then goes into the broth to cook, absorbing all the flavour the chicken has left behind. As with any rice dish, she ensures the broth is double the quantity of the rice.

Once the rice is done, she places the fried chicken back on top and finishes with a garnish of fried raisins and cashew nuts.

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

Cover photo courtesy Hooria Sayeed

In a vlog posted on Sunday, the actor made her distaste for Jamal’s comments clear and told him they were inappropriate and out of line.

Ansari said it was her firm belief that it was “difficult to find a mediocre actor” in Pakistan’s entertainment industry, but she wouldn’t announce it to the world even if she did find one.

She said the job of correcting actors and telling them how to perform fell on their directors and “insulting your colleagues on their craft, that too on social media, is highly inappropriate”.

Without taking his name and referring to him as “an accomplished actor”, Ansari said Jamal calling other senior actors “selfish”, “showpiece” and “mediocre” did not suit him and she would never make similar comments about his own work — even if it wasn’t up to par.

The Dekh Zara Pyar Se star said it was common courtesy not to speak ill of the dead. “That applies to all people, but to berate an artist after he has left the mortal realm? Someone saying something I can’t even repeat about Talat Hussain; or saying Abid [Ali] was selfish; or that Shafi [Muhammad] was of little use; or that Khayyam Sarhadi couldn’t speak well; that Rahat Kazmi, may God keep him safe, was a showpiece, this is very bad.”

She asked Jamal to be careful what example he is setting for the next generation. “This is the height of bad manners and it’s what you’re passing down to the next generation. When you pass away, or I do, the kids will dig up our corpses and insult us, saying, ‘What did these fossils know, they acted so high and mighty when they were alive. They only knew to act in one tone.’ Who knows what people will say, don’t encourage such things.”

Ansari said the actor was a better than she was, but he didn’t seem to be doing alright. “I don’t think he’s okay. He’s been through cancer, may God give him health, but I feel like his medications have made him forget how be respectful.”

She asked him to consider the impact his words have on people, “Think of how Abid Ali’s daughters feel and his wife. Think of Talat Hussain… his children must be feeling terrible. Shafi’s son… think of how he feels. You spoke about Rahat Kazmi, think about how his son feels. What are you saying… Get a hold of yourself, please, get some rest.”

Ansari also had something to say about podcasts and how everyone seems to have one nowadays. She said she had only ever appeared on one — and only because it was hosted by Ahmed Ali Butt and she was friends with his grandmother — but she knew a thing or two about interviews from her own time in the field.

She said people had forgotten how to be respectful on podcasts and interviewers back in her day like Khushbakht Shujaat, Obaidullah Baig, Mehtab Rashdi and Tariq Aziz had class and respect for their guests.

Jamal was a guest on The Yazziastic Show on April 20, when he made the disparaging comments about his contemporaries and colleagues. He said Ali was a “type actor” and “selfish”, while calling Hussain “monotonous” and reliant on “cheap theatricalities”. Sarhadi, he said, was “difficult to understand” and lacked the finesse of a trained artist.

He had praise for Qavi Khan, but that was about it. He said Kazmi was more of a “showpiece” than an actor. He called Shujaat Hashmi “self centred” and said Muhammad lacked in craft.

This not the first time the senior actor has gotten into trouble for his public comments. His comments about Mahira Khan in 2019 caused an uproar in the industry and were condemned by all quarters as ageist and sexist.

The matter reached an unprecedented height when Momina Duraid announced her production company MD Productions “will not work with him again in any capacity because of his sexist, regressive and discriminatory attitude”.

In a post on Instagram, the star highlighted the struggles she faces with her own skin and how her work and age led to acne breakouts.

Posting pictures of herself from before, during and after the breakout, Mobeen said her skin “went through a lot these last few months”.

She said a combination of harsh lights, daily makeup, wrong treatments and “just being in my early 20s with hormones” led to her developing “really bad acne”, which is “finally healing now”.

The actor said she didn’t look like the filtered pictures she posted on the internet, “but that’s because I am human”.

She went on to say that people face intense scrutiny online, especially “young women in the spotlight” and sometimes netizens “forget there are real people behind the pictures”.

Mobeen ended her note saying, “A little more kindness would go a long way.”

She isn’t alone here either. In 2019, Hania Aamir talked about the same scrutiny and mentioned feeling insecure about her own struggles with acne. She said her anxiety eventually led her to ask, “Why is my skin defining me? Who has made these beauty standards that we always feel the need to match?”

Echoing Aamir’s sentiments, Mehwish Hayat also said, “Flawsome is awesome.” The actor said that, “Away from the studio lights, the cameras and the glamorous makeup, we all battle with the same skin problems and insecurities as any other girl.”

Hayat urged girls in her line of work, Aamir included, to “embrace it,” calling it “part of being a woman”.

In 2021, Syra Yousuf faced trolls head on when they began to make fun of a barefaced picture her sister had posted. The star proceeded to post more of herself with the caption “I really like my skin. #NoFilter”

Her question was in response to a video of former TV host and newly-minted politician Iqrar ul Hassan confronting an immigration officer he claims pointed at him while he was in line at Lahore airport and said, “He’ll be ridiculed like Jawad Ahmed.” He was referring to the popular singer who launched an unsuccessful stint in electoral politics in 2019.

In an Instagram story shared on Monday, Farooq questioned if Hassan wanted all government servants who didn’t vote for the government to “sit at home,” or did he want them to “worship whoever was in power”?

She asked if the United States government had stopped running because its workers didn’t like President Donald Trump and whether people stopped having the right to hold opinions because they were working for the state.

The actor said Hassan was one of the people “who preach peace and calm in Ramazan” and asked if this is how the TV host chose to use what “little power and fame” he had acquired.

“Whatever someone said to their colleague, what is it to you?” she asked, calling Hassan’s behaviour “unacceptable” under any circumstances.

She ended her note saying real men don’t yell at people and spit on their faces, but instead have the ability to express themselves gently. She also rolled her eyes at “privileged Pakistanis”.

In the video Farooq was reacting to, Hassan can be seen yelling at an official of the Federal Investigation Agency working at the airport’s immigration desk. “The uniform you’re standing in, you work for the state. If you’re such a revolutionary, resign,” he said.

The officer in turn told the host, “Sir, I wasn’t talking to you” and asked him not to create a scene and film it for public consumption.

Hassan continued to berate the immigration official, telling him to “act like the son of a man” and “swear to God and the Prophet” that he hadn’t said anything. He told the official that he would “have to apologise” and asked if “I pay [your salary with] my taxes and you wear this uniform just so you can stand here and insult people?”

A small crowd appeared to have formed around the two with some passengers backing the TV personality while other immigration officers tried to de-escalate the situation.

The immigration officer eventually started walking back to his post with Hassan in pursuit. The host hurled one last cry of “shameless” before storming off.

Hassan later posted a statement on his Instagram explaining he was returning to Pakistan with his family after a trip to Malaysia on Saturday when the confrontation occurred. He said he didn’t want to post anything after the fact so as to “not threaten the officer’s job”.

He said he didn’t believe it was okay for people in uniform to be expressing political views while on duty and that he only decided to post his side of the story after he claimed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) spread “misinformation” against him.

He asked the party whether or not the officer’s comments would have been okay if they were directed at a PTI leader. He also said that so many people stood with him during the incident meant they too found the officer’s comments objectionable.

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.

While people are urged to exercise austerity in their fuel consumption in light of supply instability, markets have been told to close early and many offices are asking employees to work from home, we know everyone needs to step out of the house sometimes.

So, for anyone who can’t stay at home pretending we’re back in a lockdown but also can’t afford to fill up their gas tanks, here are eight ways to get around without a car.

Walking

Starting off simple, this is probably the easiest and healthiest way to go places, just get up and start walking.

Pros:

• It’s free and you don’t need any equipment — except maybe a comfortable pair of shoes.
• It’s healthy too, you can meet your daily step goals every day.

Cons:

• There is a very high chance of falling into a ditch, or a manhole, or a puddle that’s deeper than you expected.
• You might be a little late to that wedding.

Bicycles

This is pretty simple too, you can’t forget once you’ve learnt.

Pros:

• Really healthy, especially if you want toned legs.
• Significantly faster than walking.

Cons:

• You’re still the slowest thing on the road.
• Not great when dealing with potholes in Karachi.

Horses

This how people used to get around in the ‘good old days’ when nobody worried about petrol prices.

Pros:

• It’s basically a self-driving car, so there’s not a lot you need to do.
• You now have a new friend to keep you company on your journeys.

Cons:

• Your new friend can deliver a mean kick with its hind legs.
• Horses are actually really expensive to buy and keep, so it might just be cheaper to drive…

Electric vehicles

It’s all the fun of driving with none of the fuel cost.

Pros:

• A lot cheaper to run than petrol-driven cars and bikes.
• They’re eco-friendly too!

Cons:

• You’re stuck if the battery dies.
• Would be great if we didn’t have constant power outages and soaring electricity prices.

Skateboards

Definitely the coolest idea on the list — maybe you can throw on a backwards cap and shades to complete the look.

Pros:

• Looks super cool.
• Costs nothing to run.

Cons

• Not as easy as it looks.
• You’ll never be as cool as that cat.

Carpooling

If you know a bunch of people going to and from the same general area, this can cut costs significantly.

Pros:

• Driving is not nearly as unaffordable if multiple people are paying for it.
• It can be nice if the other people are fun to talk to or if your music tastes align.

Cons:

• What if they’re boring, or they listen to Chahat Fateh Ali Khan…?!
• You might have to carpool with and talk to the office weirdo (you know who we’re talking about).

Teleportation

Imagine leaving for somewhere five minutes before you need to be there and somehow still getting there on time.

Pros:

• It’s super fast.
• It’s probably safer than driving in Karachi.
• You don’t need to park.

Cons:

• You’re gonna have to invent a teleportation machine.

Magic carpet

The best option if you want to see the world — shining, shimmering and splendid.

Pros:

• Super comfortable, especially if you shell out for the extra fuzzy one.
• Can be kept inside when not in use.

Cons:

• Do you have any idea how tedious it is to file a flight plan and get it approved?
• Air pollution means your laundry bill is probably going to be higher than your fuel bill if you drove places.

Okay, all options considered, we think we’re just going to stay home for a little while. Maybe what we really need is convenient, efficient and affordable public transport…

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.

Fast-forward 16 years, Faiza is now set to represent Pakistan at the 61st Venice Biennale (VB), arguably the most prestigious and influential event on the global contemporary art calendar, which kicks off on May 9 this year. Titled ‘Punj •AB — A Sublime Terrain’, this year’s Pakistan Pavilion, curated by Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano, marks only the second time the country has participated in the VB. Hence, the expectations and anticipation are, naturally, quite high.

‘Olympics of the art world’

There is a particular kind of pressure that descends upon an artist when the work stops being entirely ‘their own.’ “Artists are mostly quite egocentric,” Faiza says with her characteristic candour. “They have these ideas and then they exhibit those ideas. But when given this opportunity, I felt rather overwhelmed upon realising that this is not the ‘Faiza Butt Pavilion.’ It’s the Pakistan Pavilion.”

Faiza, with the shrewdness of someone who has been attending the VB for the past 12 years, describes it as “a cultural event disguised as an art event.” In fact, she is no stranger to having her works displayed in Venice. But staging a pavilion at the VB is a different beast altogether. It is, as she puts it, the “Olympics of the art world.”

As Pakistan gets ready to participate in the Venice Biennale for only the second time, Eos speaks with Faiza Butt, the artist representing Pakistan at the exhibition

Nations arrive at the VB not only to showcase artistic excellence but to signal national identity and relevance. For countries such as Pakistan, participation itself is fraught with logistical, financial and bureaucratic challenges — which would explain why this is only Pakistan’s second time participating. “It’s a very expensive endeavour,” Faiza explains, noting the layers of institutional validation and funding required before an artist is even selected.

But the greater challenge, for her, is conceptual. The risk of turning a national pavilion into a “vanity show” is something she has consciously resisted. Instead, Faiza has approached the pavilion as both a responsibility and an opportunity to create something that speaks to the world but also returns inwards.

Rooted in Punjab

Born and raised in Lahore and a graduate of the National College of Arts (NCA), and later the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Faiza is now based in London. “Migration is in my DNA,” she says. “My great-grandparents migrated, my grandparents migrated, my parents migrated and I migrated also.” That continued sense of family lineage and history is what led her to crafting the theme for this year’s Pakistan Pavilion.

Faced with the impossibility of representing Pakistan in its entirety, Faiza chose to focus on what she is familiar with, stating, “I cannot talk about Balochistan. I cannot talk about Sindh. So, I better talk about what I know.” In Faiza’s hands, focusing on Punjab becomes a way to explore broader questions of history, identity and memory through a specific, lived terrain. Through her works at the Pakistan Pavilion, Faiza intends to trace an arc that she describes as a “string of pearls”, in an attempt to connect fragments of history that are often overlooked or excluded from official narratives.

In doing so, she also wishes to challenge the narrow framing of history within Pakistan’s state curriculum, which she argues offers only a partial understanding of identity. She says, “Our version of history sort of starts from Muhammad bin Qasim and then moves on to the Mughals and then Partition. And I don’t think that’s enough to create a naturally profound mind or to help us understand who we are. So, my attention [for the Pakistan Pavilion] is on the chapters of Punjab’s history that are not focused on enough.”

Faiza tentatively shares a central motif from this year’s Pakistan Pavilion, revealing, “I think, maybe just to excite the audience, I can give you a few clues [about what to expect]. We are honing in on the notion of agriculture and, through it, we are honing in on the notion of cotton. We’re picking history through the root of cotton.”

To my ears, this sounds like a bit of an intriguing departure from some of Faiza’s previous works and, in many ways, that is exactly what she is hoping for. As Faiza puts it, the biennale is not just a platform to showcase past achievements but a space to “break ground” as an artist. “I have a fear of stagnation,” she says. “I like scientists. One should keep researching. One should keep bringing something new to the pool of information.”

A work of art in a work of art

The venue for the Pakistan Pavilion is the Ex Farmacia Solveni, a stately space built in the Venetian tradition. “Venice was never meant to be a gallery or a museum,” Faiza notes. “But Venice is a museum. Venice is a work of art. How do you put works of art in a work of art?”

Her answer to this is to work with scale, colour, light, the moving image and projection. Thus, she has a designer helping her realise her vision, because this kind of show is as much about spatial choreography as it is about individual artworks.

Importantly, her familiarity with the city affords her a uniquely useful vantage point. “I think I’m quite fortunate that this was entrusted to me,” she says, “perhaps because I have a lot of experience of showing in Venice. If you just throw someone in there and tell them to just go and do something, there’s a huge possibility they’d get it wrong. And you better not get things wrong at the Venice Biennale.”

Faiza is clear that this cannot be a “bombastic show” that dazzles in Venice and then disappears. She hopes the work will have a life beyond Venice and will one day travel to Pakistan, engaging local audiences, while contributing something of value to broader conversations about history, identity and culture.

She is not, she insists, in Venice to simply wave a flag. She wants to offer something that will outlast the biennale and serve as a meditation on a region of extraordinary richness and complexity. Knowing Faiza and her artistic trajectory, odds are that she’ll pull it off.

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, April 19th, 2026

Cover: Curated by Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano (left), the Pakistan Pavilion is titled ‘Punj•AB — A Sublime Terrain’ | Photo courtesy Faiza Butt

The five jury members who will select the winners of the Golden and Silver Lion awards among the 110 participants ​said they felt compelled to commit “to the defence of human rights” as part of their ​role at the event, which opens on May 9.

“This jury will refrain from ⁠the consideration of those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by ​the International Criminal Court,” they said in a statement, without naming Russia and Israel.

The ICC has issued ​arrest warrants for sitting leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, for alleged war crimes committed against children in Ukraine, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza.

The ​Israeli and Russian embassies in Rome did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Recognition of Israeli crimes in Gaza is not new for Venice’s prestigious art circuit. Last year’s Venice International Film Festival, run by the Biennale, saw Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab win the Silver Lion award.

The film, which follows the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza by Israeli forces, received a 22-minute standing ovation — the longest in the festival’s history.

Criticism over Russian Pavilion

The International Art Exhibition has been criticised since organisers allowed Russia to reopen its pavilion at the event. After ‌Moscow’s ⁠invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian artists and institutions were excluded from major European events.

The Biennale’s decision sparked criticism from the Italian government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — a staunch supporter of Ukraine — but also from the European Union.

On Thursday, the European Commission said it had sent a letter to the Biennale ​informing it of its ​intent to terminate or ⁠suspend a 2 million euro ($2.34m) grant after they allowed Moscow to rejoin.

“There is only one ongoing grant, this is of 2 million for the ​next three years and this is the one we aim to terminate ​or to ⁠suspend,” an EU Commission spokesperson told reporters.

The spokesperson said the Biennale had 30 days to respond to the EU’s letter.

In a separate statement, the Biennale said the jury operates with full autonomy and independence.

“This is ⁠a position ​that the members have decided to bring forward and ​make public. It is a natural expression of the freedom and autonomy that La Biennale guarantees,” the statement said.

Cover photo: Venice Biennale

The film, written and directed by Abu Aleeha, focuses on the historic Karachi neighbourhood of Lyari, its girls and their love for football. It will release in Pakistan on May 8 after premiering at the UK Asian Film Festival.

The film stars Ayesha Omar as a football coach who suffered a debilitating injury, ostensibly a result of domestic abuse. Having escaped Lyari, she returns to teach girls in the area how to play.

There, Afsana (Dananeer Mobeen) and Kashmala (Trinette Lucas) train with the coach in secret, using the game to escape troubles at home.

The trailer shows how, while her mother is supportive of her activities, Afsana’s father subjects her to abuse similar to what Omar’s character faced when he finds out his daughter is “wearing pants and playing football”.

Omar, who also serves as the film’s executive producer under her production house Hawks Bay Studios, said it was more than a movie for her and the team. “It’s a story we truly believe in.” She called it “a story of resilience, identity and the courage to rise, even when the odds are stacked against you”.

She said the film was “extremely close to our hearts” and she was glad to share a glimpse of that journey with everyone.

Earlier, the film’s director said its greatest strength was its authenticity, having been shot in Lyari by people who knew the area. He said “80 per cent of the cast — including supporting actors, members of the local football teams and even our hero Shoaib Hassan — are actual Lyari inhabitants”.

Sindh Minister of Information Sharjeel Memon hailed the film in December as Pakistan hitting back at “negative propaganda” pushed by India. The province’s information department, which operates under his ministry, was also involved in making this film.

Lorrayne Mavromatis, who joined Beast Industries in 2022 as the head of its Instagram, alleged harassment of female employees was “condoned” and complaints were not taken seriously at the business.

According to a report by the BBC, Mavromatis claimed she was removed from her role at the firm after “complaining about a workplace that suffered from a lack of basic employment protections”.

In her lawsuit, she alleged sexual harassment of female employees was “both condoned and/or perpetuated by their supervisors”, adding she was also “treated differently than her male counterpart”.

She said she had complained about the “hostile environment” faced by female employees to the company’s HR chief, but was told her claims were “unsubstantiated”.

In an example listed in court papers, Mavromatis claimed she had once asked Beast Industries’ CEO James Warren why MrBeast — whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson — would not work with her on certain projects. She said Warren told her she was a “beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy”.

Another example reported by Variety said the CEO would subject Mavromatis to “to sexual harassment (making her meet him in his home for one-on-one meetings while commenting on the way she looked in her clothes) and dismissed her complaint about a male client’s unwelcome advances toward her as nothing (telling her that she should be honoured that the client was hitting on her)”.

She said she was demoted and transferred to an obscure role and fired from the company less than three weeks after she returned from pregnancy-related leave.

Mavromatis said she suffered “mental anguish, humiliation, embarrassment” and “damage to her emotional and psychological well-being” due to “MrBeast’s conduct and the adverse employment actions”. She is seeking “lost wages, lost benefits, reinstatement” and various forms of damages.

In a statement given to Variety, a company representative called Mavromatis’ allegations a “clout-chasing complaint” which is “built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements”. They said she was not fired based on performance, but was instead the result of a team reorganisation.

This isn’t the first time MrBeast has faced similar allegations. In September 2024, contestants on his show Beast Games filed a lawsuit claiming they were exploited during their time working on the show.

Papers filed as part of the suit said the contestants were not paid and did not receive meal breaks or appropriate time to rest. There were redacted mentions of sexual harassment allegations in the lawsuit as well.

Raza made an appearance on the show Rise & Shine on Thursday, where host Hassan said the he sounded like he was from Karachi. We’re not sure whether this was supposed to be a compliment or a statement.

Nadia Khan was quick to correct her co-host when he — seemingly as a joke — asserted Raza was “our boy from Karachi”. The actor clarified he was, in fact, from Lahore.

Raza then went on to say his diction was “clean” or “saaf” when it came to Urdu, but agreed with the hosts that people in his hometown had a particular way of speaking. He said his Urdu had always been “saaf” as he grew up around people who spoke the language fluently.

“Look, educated people with good accents do live in Lahore, if you sit with them, you’ll develop one too. If you spend time with people who speak Urdu with a Punjabi accent, you’ll pick that up,” the actor told Hassan and Nadia.

He said his friends and family all spoke Urdu very clearly, so fluency in the language had never been much of an issue.

After clarifying that Punjabi sounded great in a Lahori accent, the show moved right on to Raza’s friend Khushhal Khan’s recent wedding to Ramsha Khan and whether the Leader star knew of the secretive event.

He said he did know, but wasn’t able to attend due to scheduling conflicts. He said he was “very happy for them” and that he liked how they had an “understanding” and decided to get married.

As for himself, the actor joked he was going to observe Khushhal first, then make a decision. “For now, I’ll watch my friend to see how it is, see the whole process. That’s how I got into acting as well.”

He said he had been approached by a lot of potential suitors, but he wasn’t looking to tie the knot just yet.

Later in the programme, Nadia asked the Leader star if he faced any pressure from his parents to get married and settle down. He said there was no pressure at all. “They asked me once, ‘What’s your plan?’ I told them I’ll let them know when there was one.”

While the rest of the interview was mostly benign and Raza’s views on marriage are pretty reasonable, we can’t help but feel the bit about accents was very random. We’re not actually sure why it was brought up at all.

Languages are tools of communication and when people learn languages, accents naturally slip in. We’re not sure what point they were trying to make, praising Raza’s ‘accent’ or the lack thereof, but it didn’t land the way they likely wanted.

Taylor Swift topped the ranking for artists while Bad Bunny and The Weeknd took home the titles for most popular album and song.

K-pop superstars BTS were the most streamed group, 12th overall among all acts, and Coldplay were the most popular English-language group, landing at number 17 on the list.

Check out the full lists:

Most Streamed Artists of All Time

1. Taylor Swift

2. Bad Bunny

3. Drake

4. The Weeknd

5. Ariana Grande

6. Ed Sheeran

7. Justin Bieber

8. Billie Eilish

9. Eminem

10. Kanye West

11. Travis Scott

12. BTS

13. Post Malone

14. Bruno Mars

15. J Balvin

16. Rihanna

17. Coldplay

18. Kendrick Lamar

19. Future

20. Juice WRLD

Most Streamed Albums of All Time

1. Un Verano Sin Ti by Bad Bunny

2. Starboy by The Weeknd

3. ÷ (Deluxe) by Ed Sheeran

4. Sour by Olivia Rodrigo

5. After Hours by The Weeknd

6. SOS by SZA

7. Hollywood’s Bleeding by Post Malone

8. Lover by Taylor Swift

9. AM by Arctic Monkeys

10. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? by Billie Eilish

11. Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa

12. Beerbongs & Bentleys by Post Malone

13. ? by XXXTentacion

14. Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season) By Karol G

15. YHLQMDLG by Bad Bunny

16. Doo-Wops & Hooligans by Bruno Mars

17. Views by Drake

18. Midnights by Taylor Swift

19. Scorpion by Drake

20. Beauty Behind the Madness by The Weeknd

Most Streamed Songs of All Time

1. ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd

2. ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran

3. ‘Sweater Weather’ by The Neighbourhood

4. ‘Starboy’ by The Weeknd, Daft Punk

5. ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles

6. ‘Someone You Loved’ by Lewis Capaldi

7. ‘Sunflower – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ by Post Malone, Swae Lee

8. ‘One Dance’ by Drake, Wizkid, Kyla

9. ‘Perfect’ by Ed Sheeran

10. ‘Stay (with Justin Bieber)’ by the Kid Laroi, Justin Bieber

11. ‘Believer’ by Imagine Dragons

12. ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ by Arctic Monkeys

13. ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals

14. ‘Lovely (with Khalid)’ by Billie Eilish, Khalid

15. ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay

16. ‘The Night We Met’ by Lord Huron

17. ‘Closer’ by the Chainsmokers, Halsey

18. ‘Birds of a Feather’ by Billie Eilish

19. ‘Riptide’ by Vance Joy

20. ‘Die With a Smile’ by Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars

The lists provide an insight into the listening habits of Spotify’s 290 million subscribers but is skewed towards more recent releases owing to an increase in the platform’s subscriber base.

More such lists and data are expected to be released in the coming days as the anniversary celebrations continue.

Ingredients

-K&N’S Thunder Fillet (4 fillets)

-Penne pasta (2 cups; boiled)

-Olive oil (3 tbsp)

-Garlic (1 tbsp; chopped)

-Tomato puree (2 cups)

-Tomato paste (¼ cup)

-Milk (½ cup)

-Cream (½ cup)

-Black pepper powder (1 tsp)

-Oregano (1 tsp)

-Dried thyme (1 tsp)

-Red chilli flakes (1 tsp)

-Salt (1 tsp / to taste)

Method

1. Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté garlic on medium flame for few seconds.

2. Add tomato puree, tomato paste and mix well.

3. Add milk and cook until it starts to simmer. Add cream and cook for 1-2 minutes.

4. Add black pepper powder, oregano, thyme, red chilli flakes, salt and cook for a minute.

5. Add boiled penne pasta and cook for another minute.

6. Fry K&N’s Thunder Fillet as per instructions on pack and cut into strips.

7. Dish out pasta in a serving bowl and place Thunder Fillet strips. Pink Sauce Pasta is ready.

This content is produced in paid partnership with K&N’s.

Sitting next to host Kareem Rahma on a train in New York, the singer saved his most “controversial” take for the end, which was that, “American Zionists get the benefits of white privileged people, but talk like they are black people during slavery.”

His answer got a nod of approval from Rahma. Casablancas went on to say he found it “shocking” when they spoke about being “afraid” and “oppressed”.

Rahma recalled a time he faced a similar situation. “I’m like you are going to a wedding in Tel Aviv right now when there are 80,000 dead people, and more, 80,000 plus dead people, including women and children, half a mile away.

Casablancas said he didn’t think it was wrong to say this and his response to anyone bringing up Hamas and the October 7 attacks was, “Yes, bad, but you know, Native American rebellions didn’t mean it was okay to do what we did. Slave rebellions that were violent didn’t mean that slavery is not bad.”

When the host called such people “media illiterate”, the singer said indoctrination was a strong thing and that you can’t be mad at people for believing something when it was “rammed down their throats”.

In a separate take, Casablancas said he believed people from both sides of the political spectrum need to come together to fight the “real billionaire gang agenda villains”.

When Rahma compared that to class conflict, the singer said it was a little more nuanced, but essentially “it’s not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom”.

He went on to clarify that he meant the wealthy elite should be kept away from politics as a “separation of private wealth from state power”.

“If you want to be a billionaire, the only influence you can have is voting, you know, but you can’t deceive people or you know, own newspapers,” the singer said.

This is not the first time Casablancas or his band have made their position clear on political issues clear. During their performance at Coachella last week, The Strokes displayed pictures of world leaders deposed by Western-backed elements including Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Chile’s Salvador Allende and Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The on-stage montage ended with with a message about the 30 universities destroyed in Iran by US-Israeli airstrikes and footage of the demolition of Gaza’s Al-Isra University by Israeli forces.

“The age of consent is 16 and I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30,” Brand told US right-wing host Megyn Kelly in a YouTube show broadcast Wednesday.

“But when I was 30, I was a very different person. I was a lot younger and I was an immature 30-year-old.” He insisted it had been a consensual encounter, but added, “when you’re a famous man that has the ability to attract women… I think involves exploitation”.

“I think it is exploitative,” Brand admitted to Kelly on her show, adding: “I recognise that my sexual conduct in the past was selfish and I did not apply enough consideration… to how that sex was affecting other people.”

The 50-year-old, who was once married to US pop star Katy Perry, has pleaded not guilty to sexual offence charges in the UK involving a total of six women, including rape and sexual assault.

His trial is due to start in October in a London court.

Brand, once a left-leaning political campaigner, has rebranded himself as a conservative and Christian guru to millions of social media followers.

Born in 1975 to working-class parents in Essex, east of London, Brand began his stand-up career as a teenager, eventually working as an MTV presenter and host of a reality TV series.

He presented a show on the BBC’s Radio 2 station between 2006 and 2008, but quit after an on-air prank when he left an explicit voicemail for Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs.

In an interview with the BBC Asian Network, the director of her project Haq, Suparn Verma, said he had her learn the Holy Quran and understand the Quranic dialect of Arabic for four months for her role in the movie.

The film follows the story of Shazia Bano, the wife of a lawyer in 1970s India whose husband marries another woman and refuses to pay her agreed upon maintenance. When Bano takes her husband to court, he divorces her.

Verma told host Haroon Rashid the research for the movie was extensive. “We spent almost a year and a half understanding Islamic law.”

He said we lived in an “age of misinformation” where people like Andrew Tate had followers among men and women. “Everybody has information, you don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. In that space, I wanted Haq to be a voice of reason.”

The director said he had spent his whole life with Muslim friends and felt he had a certain responsibility to them “as an Indian”.

Aside from his goal of correcting “misnomers when it comes to Islam,” Verma said the idea was to show just how little the world had changed for women since the 1970s. “They lived in a man’s world then, they live in a man’s world now. They fight the same glass ceiling, the same biases.”

Haq is based on the true story of Shah Bano Begum, who won a Supreme Court of India case against her husband in 1985 and secured her right to maintenance. The case is considered a watershed moment for the rights of Muslim women in India.

The filmmaker said he was overwhelmed by how many people the story resonated with. “Honestly, you hope for a wave of love. You never expect a tsunami of connection the way Haq has [received].”

The letter from the No Music for Genocide campaign calls the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) out for continuing to include Israel in the annual Eurovision Song Contest despite the state’s ongoing killings in Palestine.

Referring to Israel’s brutal 2023 invasion of Gaza, it says audiences at the event will “find Israel celebrated on stage despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while Russia remains banned for its illegal invasion of Ukraine” for the “third year running”.

The letter rejects “Eurovision being used to whitewash and normalise Israel’s genocide, siege and brutal military occupation against Palestinians” and commended broadcasters from Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands for refusing to participate in the competition unless Israeli broadcaster KAN was excluded.

Calling the EBU “hypocritical”, the letter said the organisation believed letting Russia participate after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine would bring “disrepute” to Eurovision, “Yet more than 30 months of genocide in Gaza… aren’t considered sufficient to apply the same policy to Israel.”

The artists said they refuse to be silent “when children in Israeli prisons endure beatings for humming a tune. When all that’s left of nearly every stage, studio, bookshop and university in Gaza is piles of rubble, under which slaughtered bodies still await recovery and proper burial.”

The No Music for Genocide campaign started as a group of over 400 musicians geo-blocking their music in Israel. The movement was inspired by a similar boycott of Israeli institutions by film workers including big names such as Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield and Mark Ruffalo.

Simultaneously, over 1,000 literary figures, including winners of the Booker, Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes for Literature, have pledged not to work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications “complicit in violating Palestinian rights”.

The film’s first teaser dropped on Wednesday and it looks like we’re about to see some action-infused romance in the narrow lanes of old Lahore.

A description provided by the studio says while some love stories are gentle, this one isn’t, it’s “explosive”. It describes the film’s romance as “caught in the middle of chaos, choices, and consequences” and that it promises “emotion, intensity and edge-of-your-seat action”.

The teaser itself is no different, with Saeed narrating some of the contradictions of his story. “They say love changes a man, mine destroyed me. This is a story of love and a story of war, where the heart beats and breath stops. I have decided, I will neither stop, nor will I surrender.”

The visuals in the clip include Saeed facing off against a heavyset wrestler, leaping off rooftops and riding a vintage motorcycle with his love interest.

There is also a scene where his scream stops a goon mid-strike and makes him hand over his bat to the hero, suggesting there might be a little bit of comic relief to ease the tension in the movie.

The film is a brainchild of Imran Malik, who wrote and directed it. It stars Mehrunnisa Iqbal, Rana Ejaz, Babar Ali and Tabrez Khan alongside Shajaffar and Saeed.

Luv Di Saun will be joined in theatres by the thriller Psycho, starring Meera and Shaan Shahid over Eid. Fahad Mustafa and Mehwish Hayat’s horror flick Zombied will also be competing for cinemas patronage during the holidays.

The film, which was set to release on Eidul Azha, has been deferred until further notice, according to a post on Instagram from Hum Films.

The company appreciated fans for their “patience and unwavering support” and said they “remain committed to bringing this story to the big screen very soon”. They said a new release date would be announced “at the earliest”.

The film, starring Bilal Ashraf and Maya Ali in its lead roles, was due to be an epic of heroism with helpings of guns, guts and glory on the side. Its teaser was packed with adrenaline; it began in icy terrain, with a narrator speaking of a perilous path full of struggles and oppression.

“The pharaohs of our time wear but a single face, a face I am sworn to recognise. I will find them and I will rise up. And I will talk the sacred line decreed by God. My name is Yusuf Khan, this is my story,” he said, with Ashraf’s character on screen.

There’s a scene where an iconic black and yellow taxi drifts through a roundabout and another where Ali’s character is setting up a shot with a sniper rifle.

Variety reported that the production employed multiple international crew members for its action sequences, with Nick Khan of Eternals and Hussain Abdullah of Skyfall leading the team. The crew travelled to Pakistan to shoot the action sequences and train local crew members for several months, after which it took around 70 days to shoot the action scenes alone.

The publication reported that Ashraf performed his own stunts, without body doubles, sustaining multiple injuries during filming.

The release of Khan Tumhara is the latest in a line of major entertainment events to have been postponed after unprovoked US-Israeli attacks on Iran plunged the region into chaos.

Earlier, the ARY Entertainment Awards suffered a similar fate due to security concerns regarding their Dubai venue. The grand finale of Pakistan Idol was also pushed forward in view of austerity measures and a change in the national sentiment.

I say this because even the great Indian film legend, Dilip Kumar, once remarked that ‘Moin Akhtar’s great artistry is worth copying.’

But Moin Akhtar was a lot more than just a comic. Beginning his long career as an impersonator, he went on to become a much appreciated stand-up comedian, TV, film and stage actor, talk-show host and then ultimately, going back to doing impersonations.

Surprisingly, not much is available on the man’s life in terms of a biography or a detailed study of this prolific artiste, even though he remained to be the country’s leading comic talent ever since the 1970s.

But Moin Akhtar’s gradual ascend towards stardom and legendary status was also wrought with some devastating failures that took a toll on the man’s health.

He arrived onto the scene at a time when Pakistan, like the rest of the world, too was about to enter a period in the 1960s when urban youth had begun to question the materialism and conservative politics of their parents and were demanding more breathing space to practice their new artistic and political ideas.

Moin Akhtar’s rise was not rapid. His fame grew through word-of-mouth, especially on his home turf in Karachi.

He had been impersonating his teachers and famous Pakistani film actors in school when all of a sudden he was called up by the organisers of a Pakistan Day event at a club in Karachi in 1966. He was just 16 years old.

When his turn came to perform on stage, he did what he was already doing in school. But this time, he added a new act to his impersonation repertoire — that of the famous Pakistani film actor, Mohammad Ali.

Ali had been popular for his loud emotional scenes and a booming voice, and when Moin Akhtar impersonated and mimicked all this to perfection (also adding his own twists and bits), the crowd at the event is said to have erupted in laughter. They had never seen or heard anything like this.

Word about Moin Akhtar’s antics spread and he soon became a popular draw at ‘variety shows’ at universities, colleges and parties.

It is also interesting to note that even though Pakistan’s campuses in the late 1960s had begun to vibrate with fiery uprisings against the Ayub Khan dictatorship, Moin Akhtar mostly kept his act apolitical, concentrating on mimicking and revolving his skits around famous film personalities.

Although he managed to make a modest living doing such shows, his first big break came when in 1970, a 20-year-old Moin Akhtar was invited to perform at the time’s most popular primetime stage show on Pakistan Television (PTV).

Called the Zia Mohyeddin Show and hosted by the now famous intellectual Zia Mohyeddin, Moin Akhtar left the audience in stitches when he mimicked the voices of those who had presented PTV’s special transmission during the country’s first democratic elections in 1970.

This was also one of the first few occasions he had come face-to-face with Anwar Maqsood.

Anwar Maqsood had been working as a scriptwriter for the show, but would go on to became a famous satirist and struck a celebrated abiding partnership with the comic genius.

But all this would shape up a decade later. After his successful stint on the Zia Mohyeddin Show, Moin Akhtar became a permanent fixture on PTV, even going on to host his own show called Monday Kay Monday.

Surprisingly, not many acting offers came his way from either TV or film. He continued working as a mimic and impersonator but got a career boost when in 1973, he pulled off a hugely successful show at Karachi’s famous Beach Luxury Hotel where apart from exhibiting his highly improvised impersonation of the time’s famous film stars, he also began impersonating the cultural idiosyncrasies of the many different ethnicities that resided in Pakistan.

It is said that he was one of the first Pakistani comics to do so, an act that would successfully be carried forward by the likes of famous PTV comics, Majid Jehangir, Ismail Tara, Umar Sharif and Liaquat Soldier.

As Moin Akhtar maintained his presence in the public eye as a young comic through various shows on PTV, his main income came from doing private shows for multinationals and colleges.

However, though still ignored by PTV for his acting potential, in 1975 Moin Akhtar finally got an offer to work in a film.

By the mid-1970s the Pakistan film industry had begun to hit a peak, producing an average of 200 films a year (mostly in Urdu, but also in Punjabi, Gujrati, Sindhi and Pashtu).

The film that Moin Akhtar appeared in was called Tajdar, and his role of a typical Lollywood maskhara (jester), could not save the film from being a flop. But the failure didn’t stop Moin Akhtar’s ascendancy to stardom.

During the lack of acting offers from TV and film, Moin Akhtar continued to brush up and fatten his mimicry and hosting skills, and he continued to be a popular draw at private events and club shows, also doing his bit on various PTV shows.

He had also been working in commercial theatre. This form of theatre, over which men like Umar Sharif would rule, was still in its infancy.

Luck seemed to have bypassed him again when in 1978 young director Shoaib Mansoor (who would go on to become a prominent TV and film director), began casting actors for a comedy skit show on PTV.

Moin Akhtar should have been an automatic choice, but Mansoor and the show’s scriptwriter, Anwar Maqsood, instead went for relatively unknown stage actors from Karachi, such as Majid Jehangir, Ismail Tara and Zeba Shahnaz. Some like Sakhi Kamal were studying at the University of Karachi and were also politically active there.

Nevertheless, the show, Fifty-Fifty was an instant hit. Inspired by the more sophisticated satire show, Shoaib Hashmi’s Such Gup (1973-76) – that had been banned by the new military dictatorship in 1977 – Fifty-Fifty mixed sophisticated wit with populist humour, parodying the bureaucracy, ethnic idiosyncrasies, the declining standards of  the film industry and PTV itself. It ran from 1978 until 1984.

It succeeded in swimming through even the most repressive censorship laws imposed by the Zia dictatorship.

Moin Akhtar’s destiny could have turned out to be quite different had Anwar Maqsood not quit the Fifty-Fifty team after experiencing a fall-out with its director and actors in 1981.

As Ismail Tara and Majid Jehangir took over the writing duties of Fifty-Fifty, Anwar Maqsood went on to script and appeared on a series of his own shows (also on PTV) such as Show Time, Shoshah, Silver Jubilee, etc.

For these he chose two central comedians, Moin Akhtar and Bushra Ansari. It was during these shows that Moin Akhtar really blossomed into a diversified comic.

The duo played a number of fictitious characters, mouthing witty scripts jotted down by Anwar Maqsood, who too became famous for successfully dodging the censors with tongue-in-cheek remarks that were actually taunts aimed at the Zia regime and its overbearing moralities.

This was also the first time Moin Akhtar saw himself doing socio-political scripts. Slowly but surely, he was finally emerging from his status as a cult favorite and onto the mainstream as a versatile comic.

The 1980s had been rather fruitful. Moin Akhtar had risen from being a cult star and master mimic to becoming a regular skit actor on various successful Anwar Maqsood projects.

And even though he still did not manage to get regular work as an actor, he had begun to venture into the lucrative comedy theatre scene that had begun to grow in Karachi and Lahore.

Nevertheless, after the demise of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship and the return of democracy in Pakistan in 1988, three performances by Moin Akhtar (between 1988 and 1993) finally handed him the stardom his talents had always promised and deserved.

First, it was his role in a wonderfully done comedy play on PTV called, Eid Train. Aired on the night of the first day of Eid in 1989, it captured Moin Akhtar playing his now trademark character of a loudmouthed, straight-talking (but skinny) Karachiite. The play was a huge hit.

Then there was his laudable performance as an aged writer in a long-play (for PTV), penned by Anwar Maqsood called Half-Plate, in which Moin Akhtar plays an old writer who is suffering from a financial crises but refuses to take up his ancestral profession of a kabaabchi (cook).

Starring alongside Moin Akhtar in the play was the great actress, late Khalida Riyasat and the fidgety late Jamshed Ansari. Incidentally, the fourth main actor of the play, the versatile Latif Kapadia, too is no more in this world.

But perhaps the most well-known acting performance from Moin Akhtar was a 1993 play on PTV called Rozy.

Moin Akhtar was now dishing out a series of great acting performances, as if making up for the all those times his acting skills were ignored. His performance in Rozy in this respect saw him hit a peak.

Written by playwright and journalist Imran Aslam, Rozy was an ambitious adaptation of Dustin Hoffman’s famous Hollywood hit, Tootsie.

Tootsie shows a struggling actor dressing up as a woman to get a part in a soap opera.

Aslam took the plot of Tootsie and wittily turned it into a statement against the kind of harassment women face in the workplace.

Moin Akhtar intensely played the role of the struggling angry-young-actor who dons make-up and women’s attire to land a part in a TV serial.

Moin Akthar had finally mushroomed into a star performer. The only other Pakistani comic that dared to be compared to his caliber was Umar Sharif, who too had broken out from his cult status and gained mainstream popularity, mainly through commercial theatre.

But Umar’s comedy was more populist, rapidly using Karachi’s street lingo and imagery, whereas Moin Akhtar still kept a middle-class sensibility about his acts.

Nevertheless, when Umar directed, scripted and acted in his own film in the early 1990s, Moin Akhtar followed suit.

Umar’s film became a box-office hit, and Moin Akhtar, fresh from his successful acting exploits on TV, invested heavily in his own film called Mr.K2.

Unfortunately the film turned out to be a financial and critical disaster. Friends suggest that this colossal failure took a heavy toll on the comic genius who was also a heavy-smoker and loved to stay up nights with friends and colleagues.

A reckless and unhealthy lifestyle coupled by his workaholic nature and the failure of his film venture led him to suffer a heart attack. He got a by-pass done in 1997 but returned to regain what he had lost.

He began hosting celebrity shows, but it was Anwar Maqsood’s satirical talk-show, Loose Talk, that brought him back into the limelight.

A parody of BBC’s Hard Talk, Anwar Maqsood would play Pakistan’s version of Tim Sebastian week after week, talking to all sorts of fictional characters, from politicians and maulvis, to heroin addicts and businessmen – all of them played with ingenious insight and hilarity by Moin Akhtar.

It is said Moin Akhtar had played more than 200 different characters on the hit show!

Alas, this mind-boggling exhibition of versatility was to be this comic genius’ last great hurrah before his death from a heart-attack at the age of 60.

This article was originally published on April 23, 2011

According to a press release issued on Tuesday, the decisions were made in a meeting at the headquarters of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) chaired by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, whose ministry oversees the CDA.

Residents of Islamabad, ever proud of their city’s natural charm, took to X in a fury to denounce the plans to develop one of the city’s most lush green areas.

Netizens questioned why the project was necessary and what had been done to assess and mitigate the environmental harm that would result from it.

Even Senator Sherry Rehman, the former federal minister for climate change, called on the government to review the plans. She said the Margalla green area is a “protected zone” and highlighted the “brutal” evictions in Bari Imam, saying “compassion and compensation must come before anything else for vulnerable populations living in these areas from before 1947”.

Some users had suggestions on what could be done in place of development in the Margallas, ranging from building environmentally conscious attractions to building hotels and parks elsewhere in the city.

There was also a feeling there were other places in the country that could use a new 1,000 kanal park or two.

While details are still scarce, the park is expected to be built in the capital’s D-12 sector, one of the northernmost sectors bordering the Margalla Hills.

The development of hotels is especially uncertain as the area highlighted for the park is zoned in a way that would not allow major construction projects to proceed.

While it is unclear whether the CDA will alter its zoning laws or if the hotels will be built somewhere else, what is clear is that the people of Islamabad love the city’s trees and don’t want to see them cut down and replaced with concrete structures.

Well, allow me to introduce you to three more: MC Affo, MC Bablay and MC Shobi. Restaurant workers by day, the three Gizri natives are part of Karachi’s underground rap scene. They’re also the focus of Saba Karim Khan’s documentary We Really Are Pakistan (W.R.A.P).

Intrigued by the trailer, I got in touch with Khan — a filmmaker, author and university instructor based in Abu Dhabi — to ask what inspired her to make the film and how she came across her protagonists.

She told me she had seen the Indian film Gully Boy — a fictional account of street rappers in Mumbai — and felt there had to be something similar in Pakistan. When she brought the idea up to a friend, he had just the men for the task.

“I was in Karachi, sitting with an old school friend in his play café, telling him about the film I wanted to make. He opened the kitchen door, called out a few names — and Affo, Bablay, and Shobi walked in and performed an impromptu audition… That was it. I was in.”

The second question, naturally, was about the rappers themselves, who were they and what made them do what they do.

The filmmaker told me Affo was the café’s head chef and had been through a messy divorce where he lost custody of his daughter. He raps to fulfil a dream to someday hear his daughter say, “My papa is the best artist.”

Bablay is Affo’s sous chef and Shobi is a server; both have been through hard times and work to support their families.

“Their rap repertoire is wide-ranging,” Khan told me. “There’s pride about their neighbourhood, class divides, Karachi — the city, human relationships and loss. They talk about being self-starters and conquering pessimism, of prevailing despite the circumstances.”

Expanding on those circumstances, the filmmaker said, “These rappers are taught, throughout their early years, to downsize their dreams to fit their reality. What they’re doing instead is expanding that reality to meet those dreams. I find that message glowing with hope, resistance, a refusal to ‘settle’ for the hand they’ve been dealt.”

I asked Khan if the rap scene springing up in Gizri was an isolated occurrence or if this was something she found elsewhere too.

“There definitely seems to be a wider movement happening with rap in Pakistan — Lyari, for instance, has a long-standing relationship with music and performance,” she said. “What’s particularly exciting is seeing more women enter the space, often in very public, visible ways. It suggests a scene that’s expanding both creatively and socially.”

She also said this movement was part of a much larger, global sphere. “There’s a shared language to hip-hop, that transcends physical borders, the colour of your skin, socio-economic class,” she said.

“Rap music travels,” Khan told me. “Human stories, music and emotions have a way of overcoming constructed boundaries.”

It’s also much older than most people would think. She referred to a talk given by oncology professor and Urdu poetry enthusiast Azra Raza, who said the poetic style now identified as rap had existed in Urdu for over 150 years as bahr-i-taweel.

True to the international relevance of its subject, W.R.A.P has received acclaim across borders, playing at film festivals in Paris, Cologne, Sweden, Montreal, Florida and Jaipur. The next stop for the film is the British Asian Film Festival in London, where it will stand alongside Pakistani films Ghost School and Mera Lyari next month.

One screening the filmmaker had to mention though, was the film’s first. “We were in a room full of Karachiites, ranging from so many different neighbourhoods, united through music and film. By the end, when the boys did a rap performance, the atmosphere was electric. You rarely get to see class collapse in such a powerful way.”

She said she hoped to get the film streaming in Pakistan after it completed its festival run and is even in talks with some platforms to host it. Khan said she wanted to screen it in cities apart from Karachi as well.

As for her own future, the filmmaker is already working on a number of projects. Last year, she worked on an experimental short, Dealing in Desire, with Sarmad Khoosat. She also has a couple of ideas for documentaries and has been experimenting with short films of her own.

The ‘Like A Virgin’ singer, 67, took to Instagram to ask for help in finding outfits that vanished after the show.

“I discovered that the vintage pieces that I wore went missing — my costume that was pulled from my personal archives — jacket, corset, dress and other garments,” the diva wrote.

“These aren’t just clothes, they are part of my history,” she said, adding other items from the same era had also gone.

The missive came after her viral appearance alongside Carpenter during the weekend’s headline set at the festival in the California desert.

The duo performed Madonna’s 1990 hit ‘Vogue’ and 1989’s ‘Like A Prayer’ — chart smashes around the world a decade before Carpenter was born.

“I’m hoping and praying that some kind soul will find these items and reach out,” Madonna said, adding: “I’m offering a reward for their safe return.”

Originally published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2026

Several episodes of Mirza Ki Heer — IDream Entertainment’s new drama, which has just started airing on ARY Digital — are currently being shot here and they revolve around a ‘shaadi ka ghar’ [wedding home], which means that the mayun décor will stay put until the scenes are wrapped up.

A seating area is set up in one corner, a bright yellow sheet laid over it and yellow and orange cushions strewn across it. There are marigold garlands bordering the stairs, the window sills and the pillars. They keep falling every now and then, and one of the spot-boys patiently tapes them back on.

A house that tells a story

There are little details in the various nooks and corners of the house, quietly reinforcing that this is, indeed, our hero, Mirza’s (played by actor Ali Raza) home. Family portraits hang on the walls, an old TV set has been placed inside the room belonging to the grandparents, bowls and vases are scattered on ageing tables, old crockery can be seen in a cupboard with dusty glass doors and there are bags, carelessly propped on chairs, symbolising the hotchpotch, not very affluent lifestyle of the residents of ‘Mirza House.’

With meticulous world-building, young, new leads and a formidable antagonist, director Aehsun Talish’s Mirza Ki Heer is betting on grand romance — the verdict on how well it will do remains to be seen

Evidently, the staircase snaking its way up from the courtyard to the upper floor has been specially constructed for the drama. When you go up it, you realise how makeshift it is, with some of the planks slightly rickety and creaking as you step on them. However, Mirza prances up them quite adeptly in the drama’s first episode, thus proving his acting mettle.

The cast can be found in one of the rooms on the first floor. Around the time that I arrive, Ali is about to have lunch with some of the cast and crew while the titular Heer — actress Hina Afridi — is getting her hair and make-up done.

Ali Safina, who plays Mirza’s happy-go-lucky uncle, walks in a few hours later. Zahid Ahmed, the villainous Dilnawaz, hell-bent on thwarting the two young lovers, is going to arrive at night for his scenes. Perpetually pacing up and down the courtyard are director Aehsun Talish and his right hand, his son Raza Talish, ironing out the nitty-gritties before the camera rolls.

Detailing the everyday

“Details are very important,” Aehsun says, once I have navigated the entire location and peered into all the rooms.

“In a lot of dramas, you see rooms that look completely artificial. They usually have a bed, two lamps, a very proper curtain, and then the hero puts on a tie, the heroine gets her hair curled, and they are both filmed there. It doesn’t connect because it’s all so perfect and manicured. TV audiences are very sharp and notice such things.”

He explains that, since Mirza’s family has been living in the house for 70 years, the team ensured the space looked lived-in. Simply placing portraits on the walls wasn’t enough; clutter was deliberately added — including plastic bags strewn around on a sofa — as such homes sometimes lack adequate storage space — to reflect the reality of such households. These personal touches, he emphasises, are essential.

The drama’s producer, Abdullah Seja, observes, “Hundreds of dramas have been shot in this very house, but we went the extra mile, restructuring it, so that the audience would not recognise it from previous dramas. I think it’s important to make these efforts in order to improve the visual experience and keep the story fresh.”

He further reveals that the courtyard was originally a covered area; the roof was removed, the staircase built, and the interiors redesigned to make the setting believable as Mirza’s home.

There’s more: “We have been experimenting a lot with Artificial Intelligence [AI] and, in this drama, we have utilised it to create most of the background music,” says Seja. “This is just the beginning. I am hopeful that soon we will be implementing AI into many more aspects of production.”

A shift to grand romance

Mirza Ki Heer, according to its makers, is a ‘grand romantic drama’, a genre that iDream Entertainment and Aehsun Talish hadn’t explored extensively before, both having focused instead on social commentaries in Sharpasand, the painful family tug-of-war in Bismil and the heightened filminess in Sher.

While shooting these earlier dramas, I had met Aehsun on various occasions and he had been very enthusiastic every time, excited about what was to come and discussing the nuances of the scripts at length. Today, he is similarly energised for Mirza Ki Heer.

“It’s very important to be excited,” he says. “You need to be convinced that there is something special about the script and then figure out ways of storytelling that will keep the audience engaged. Most stories are more or less the same. It is the way they are translated visually that makes them stand out.”

A fresh new romantic ‘jorri’ (pair) has been cast in the drama. Why Ali Raza and Hina Afridi?

“They are both young and there is a freshness to them,” says the director. “Young actors have a lot of energy and both Ali and Hina are very enthusiastic, offering new ideas, owning the project and promoting it. It helps that they are both friends and so they are comfortable with each other and are able to perform without any inhibitions. They have both acted very well.”

I later get to talk to these two young actors, who agree that they are very comfortable acting out romantic scenes, though they end up laughing through most of them.

“We do laugh a lot but, then, it’s work and we have to try and get the scenes right,” says Ali. “It’s a good thing that we’re friends. Hina is like family to me and so we are very comfortable with each other. We improvise a lot and we react well to each other, so that the flow of the scene does not get disturbed.”

Hina adds, “We often discuss a scene beforehand, suggesting how he could act and, then, what I would do and running our ideas by Aehsun sahib.” She laughs and continues, “Aehsun sahib doesn’t say cut very loudly. We will be acting out a scene, looking into each other’s eyes, not realising that he has softly said ‘cut’ and the shooting has wrapped up!

“It’s very important to be excited,” director Aehsun Talish says. “You need to be convinced that there is something special about the script and then figure out ways of storytelling that will keep the audience engaged. Most stories are more or less the same. It is the way they are translated visually that makes them stand out.”

“There was this one time when I had to cry in a scene and for three-and-a-half minutes, I was crying, giving different expressions. Then, I heard Aehsun sahib’s voice behind me, asking: ‘Why is she still crying? Why are you crying, Hina?’ I hadn’t realised that the scene had already been completed,” she grins.

Both Ali and Hina’s initial acting trysts have been promising and both young actors have built up considerable fan followings. What attracted them to Mirza Ki Heer?

“It’s a very romantic drama, and I wanted to act in one. And in all the scripts that have been offered to me recently, this was the best one,” says Hina. “Ali’s mother is actually a very good friend of mine. She helps him decide what project to do, and she helped me out, too. She read this script, and we would be WhatsApping long voice notes back and forth, discussing the story.

“I was excited to be working with Aehsun sahib,” she adds. “I have been his fan ever since he directed Suno Chanda. By then, I had made my acting debut with this production house, in Pehli Si Mohabbat. This is my second project with them.”

Hina continues: “This drama was offered to me around the time that I was getting married and my manager told me that, if I signed up for it, I would be giving up the 15 days that I had taken off after my wedding. I said that I did not care and I was on the set just five days after getting married. That’s how excited I was!”

And what about you, I ask Ali. “I wanted to work with Aehsun Talish and I was excited to be working with iDream Entertainment for the first time. The last drama I had acted in was for Hum TV, while this one was for ARY Digital — I like switching channels with each project.

“I also really liked my character. He is an athlete and, to some extent, I got to show my comedic side in some of the scenes. Later in the story, the character undergoes a complete transition, which also struck me as very interesting.”

Ali, in his short career, has often been linked to his co-stars, with fans conjecturing whether there is a real or reel romance on screen. Why does he think this happens?

“Yes, why?” he questions with a grin. “I think I am able to build chemistry well on-screen which is why people just start assuming things. It has never made me or my co-actors uncomfortable, because we’re just doing our jobs. And it’s good for the project.”

Hina adds, “That’s how it should be. We’re doing our job and trying to do it right.”

Here, Ali decides to offer some acting tricks, “Not just with dialogues and your actions, I think that it is important to emote with your eyes in a romantic scene. Position the lighting towards our eyes so they sparkle.”

They both burst into laughter.

Enter the antagonist

Putting a spanner in the works of this romance, sparkling eyes and all, is Zahid Ahmed’s Dilnawaz. The drama’s teaser introduces him as someone with ‘fear in his shadow’ and the initial episodes depict him as the nefarious villain, stalking about predatorily, speaking in a deep, sinister drawl, intent on seizing anything that captures his interest.

Just as expected, the unassuming Heer, reeling from the shock of her father’s suicide and trying to repay his debts, catches Dilnawaz’s attention.

Zahid, of course, is a veteran actor with a slew of exceptional performances to his credit. His trajectory has never leaned towards being a generic ‘hero’ or ‘villain’. Instead, he has always professed an interest in a role that is meaty. “That’s me, always in search of meat. The perpetually malnourished actor!” he quips.

So, there’s meat to Dilnawaz?

“Yes, the villain plays a prominent role in this story,” says Zahid. “He’s a central character and so, I put my faith in the producer and director and signed on.”

For producer Abdullah Seja, Mirza Ki Heer is a “high-octane love story” in which the villain is actually more powerful than the hero.

“Zahid is a brilliant actor, which made him a great choice for this role,” says Seja. “This villain is scary and crime is an everyday part of his life. In the drama, the hero actually gets created because of circumstances. He is originally a happy-go-lucky young boy, and it is because of the villain and what happens with Heer that he changes. And then, how the hero goes on to defeat the villain is going to be interesting.”

Aehsun Talish agrees. “We needed a powerful antagonist and Zahid is a wonderful actor. He has a voice that commands attention and an immense screen presence. It is only when the villain is formidable that it becomes enjoyable seeing how the hero will beat him.”

While the drama has already started airing, the shooting is still ongoing. “I think we’ll be shooting for the next few months,” says Ali.

Waiting for the verdict

Do they get encouraged or discouraged by the audience’s reviews of a drama that they are still shooting?

“You can get influenced and this has its advantages and disadvantages,” says Ali. “If they like the drama, there is a chance that you might get overconfident, thinking that what you’re doing is good enough and not trying to do even better. Your 110 per cent doesn’t come through because you decide that you’re doing very well and just keep working at that pace. As long as you don’t become overconfident, positive responses from the audience keep you motivated.”

And what if the response is negative? “Then, we just keep working. We are actors and we have to do our job,” he says.

Hina adds, “You can’t let negativity affect your work. There are so many good projects that just don’t become commercial successes. You never know.”

“But this drama has been shot very well,” says Ali. “New technologies have been used and a lot of details have been added in. It is a story with commercial appeal and, as long as it is executed in a compelling way, I think that people will enjoy it.”

It’s early days yet for Mirza Ki Heer, with only the first few episodes having aired so far. Will the audience like it and pronounce it an all-out hit? You never know. But the cast and crew are certainly putting in their all, investing long hours into the shoot, discussing scenes at length, traversing Mirza House in Karachi and, before that, Dilnawaz’s ancestral haveli at a location in Wazirabad, their smart watches clocking in more than 20,000 steps daily (as revealed by Aehsun Talish).

Perhaps some of that passion, that excitement, that belief in this grand, romantic rollercoaster of a story will ultimately filter through on screen.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, April 19th, 2026

Weinstein, a central figure of abuse allegations that spurred the MeToo movement, appeared at the New York City courtroom wheelchair-bound due to ill health. He is being retried on a count of third-degree rape against Mann that allegedly happened in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel room.

Last June, a judge declared a mistrial on the charge after the jury foreperson refused to return to deliberate the case amid a jury-room feud. Weinstein, 74, is already imprisoned for other sex offences, so he will remain behind bars regardless of the retrial verdict.

“This case will come down to power, to control and manipulation,” said Assistant District Attorney Candace White. She told how Weinstein used his Hollywood clout to take advantage of Mann — then a 27-year-old “barely scraping by” — including by enticing her with a role in a movie that she had no chance of getting.

Originally published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2026

The latest television drama to join the list of storylines with implausible informational ‘gaps’ in content is BJ Production’s Humrahi (2026) on Geo TV, written by Zanjabeel Asim Shah, directed (and story penned) by Babar Javaid and starring Danish Taimoor (Sayhaan Ghazi) and Hiba Bukhari (Elif).

Currently being hailed as “the biggest love story of the new year”, the much-anticipated serial has opened on a note of excitement witnessed in the high numbers of its YouTube viewership. Much of the reason for this initial positive reception is Taimoor and Bukhari’s onscreen chemistry in previous hit series such as Deewangi (2020) and Jaan Nisar (2024) as well as Taimoor’s enthusiastic fan following, which allows him to pull off repetitive, at times mediocre, drama scripts.

And certainly, in episode 1, an introductory shot of Sayhaan places focus on Taimoor’s biceps and a later swimming pool scene on his upper torso to tap into the actor’s powerful screen presence and popularity among female viewers.

Yet, in spite of its attractive features: the Taimoor-Bukhari pairing, the burgeoning, ever popular, romantic love story and the promise of being shot on location abroad (the OST reveals wonderfully shot foreign settings indicating both the production’s generous budget and attention paid to cinematography), Humrahi’s initial storyline makes the narrative a bit unconvincing. The opening episodes present us with gaps in information that do not manage the delicate balance between suspense and incongruity.

As a result, for the viewer, it is not curiosity that manifests but frustration to make sense of what has transpired. Accompanying this sentiment is a feeling of déjà vu: character roles and situations we have seen all too often in Pakistani television dramas. A quick comparison with Taimoor’s recent dramas will suffice to draw parallels. In Sher (2025), the male protagonist Sher’s (Taimoor’s role) love interest is Dr Fajar (Sarah Khan) and so is the case in Humrahi where the male protagonist is cast opposite a female doctor protagonist. The male lead returns home from abroad to face family enmity and business rivalry in Sher, Mann Mast Malang (2025) and Humrahi. A question that arises, then, is that are such repetitive creative choices due to a shortage of ideas for Pakistani television drama scripts? Or are they a manifestation of a well-worked formula?

Eight episodes into Humrahi, the plot seems to be the more or less formulaic rich boy meets the not-so-rich girl who, after a series of coincidental meetings, and sufficient number of obstacles, fall in love, and presumably, live happily ever after. Taimoor as Sayhaan is presented in a role that we have come to identify him: a ‘sultanat ka jan nisheen’ who is living a charmed yet emotionally deprived life as (Humrahi, ep. 1). He is the only son of Ghazi Yusuf (Shahzad Nawaz), the chairman of the GYT group, a character whose portrayal — threatening unsuspecting individuals into selling or giving up their properties, sporting and firing guns while moving around with a small band of weapon-laden guards — takes him closer to a criminal don than a business magnate.

Surrounded by the usual accessories (the palatial home, SUVs, threatening armed guards) that depict the lifestyle of the very wealthy in Pakistani dramas, Sayhaan is also presented as generous and compassionate to individuals who are less privileged — a macho male figure with a sensitive side. Bukhari is the assertive doctor daughter of a lady with links to Turkey who owns and manages a restaurant.

The impetus for later action is an accidental road encounter (with a powerfully depicted moment of impact) between the two protagonists in the drama’s first episode where Sayhaan drives his car into Elif’s, putting them at loggerheads right from the start, and in subsequent meetings where Elif asserts her right to compensation for injuries incurred to her vehicle.

Also witnessed in these early episodes is how the motherless hero with father issues finds solace in two motherly figures, the maid Nishat aka Chanda (Salma Zafar) who brought him up in the absence of a mother and Mariyam (Laila Wasti), the restauranteur friend of his deceased mother who is now his dear friend and with whom he seems to spend an extraordinary amount of time. So far, so good. 

But several incongruities of dialogue, action and storyline plunge the viewer into a state of dissatisfaction. Most notable among the jarring elements in the drama’s narrative is the presentation of relationships. In spite of the suggested bond between Mariyam and Sayhaan, viewers are expected to believe that he does not know Mariyam’s daughter Elif, even by sight, and Mariyam has no idea that her former friend’s husband, and Sayhaan’s father, is Ghazi Yusuf, or presumably, anything about Sayhaan’s family background.

Ghazi also does not seem to know that the lady he is sending his henchmen to harass for the forced purchase of her restaurant was once his wife’s friend. It is only in episode 5, when Sayhaan turns up at Elif’s house to find her mourning her mother’s death, that he discovers that Mariyam was her mother. The absence of rationale behind the presentation of relationships means that the viewer has to engage in a certain amount of suspension of disbelief to continue watching comfortably.

In its initial episodes, the show also reminds us that medical scenes are another area that can be improved in Pakistan’s television dramas. Lapses of knowledge related to the medical field and the monotone, at times rushed, and far from empathetic, responses to distressed family members that do not match expectations of the clinical detachment necessary to maintain professionalism, are common in Pakistani television dramas. In the case of Humrahi, however, while Mariyam’s doctor is more compassionate than other medical professionals in Pakistani dramas, the serial errs in the presentation of his professionalism.

During a moment in episode 5, a highly emotional Elif, wanting to save a mother with a deteriorating heart condition, tells the doctor that had her blood group matched her mother’s she would have donated her heart to save her mother’s life. But what are we supposed to make of the doctor’s rather absurd response “Kash aisa ho sakta beta”, meaning “if only that were possible”?

Is he suggesting that had the blood groups matched, he would have let Elif die to save the mother? Afterall, the organ in question is a heart not a kidney. The dialogue given to the doctor is surely enough to make any responsible doctor cringe. And in spite of another doctor’s insistence, it remains unconvincing that Chanda needs to be admitted to the hospital for a fractured foot.

Later hospital scenes after Elif is shot with a bullet intended for Sayhaan further demolish doctor depictions in the show. The barging into the ICU by a group of the heroine’s doctor friends and their subsequent inquisitive interrogation of the hero, followed by his reminder that they need to observe hospital protocols, is one such painful moment. Added to the affronts against hospitals and doctors is how the hospital management and security are effectively disabled in the drama: Ghazi is able to stride into hospital premises with his thugs in black; Sayhaan is able to position guards in hospital corridors and bully (with and without the help of a gun) both hospital personnel and doctors into meek compliance. In a drama with clear emphasis on the medical field, and a doctor protagonist, it is disappointing that more careful thought has not been put into its medical moments.

The good news, however, is that the series does offer signs of interesting plot development. It hints at a possible double role for Bukhari with the inclusion of details that suggest a twin sister and Elif’s imminent death. In particular, the emphasis laid on her decision to register her heart for donation upon her death, which also has a philanthropic message. Ghazi’s business rivalry and historic enmity with another mafia don-like figure Lala (Ayub Khoso) is another plot development waiting to unfold.

In addition to this, episode 8 closes with the possibility of further entanglements in the love story with the entry of a new male character, Aurangzeb (Azfar Rehman). The moment Sayhaan is ready to pop the big question to Elif, his hopes are dashed by her exuberant greeting of who now appears to be a potential rival in love. 

While there is much to anticipate in the show’s upcoming episodes, we can only hope that plausible reasons for the omission of early factual details will be incorporated into the script and there will be less reliance on hard-to-digest elements simply to further the plot. If so, later episodes will prove less taxing for viewers. In the meantime, viewers will have to fend for themselves, with consolation provided by Taimoor’s magnetic charm.

D4vd was charged with murder with special circumstances of lying ​in wait, committing a crime for financial gain and murdering a witness in an investigation. He faces ​a maximum prison sentence of life without parole. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman ⁠said prosecutors would decide later whether to seek the death penalty.

Attorneys for the singer entered the not-guilty plea on ​his behalf and asked for a preliminary hearing to be held as soon as possible for him to hear the ​evidence prosecutors say they have gathered.

“We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez, nor was he the cause of her death,” defense attorney Blair Berk said during the arraignment in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Judge Theresa McGonigle said no bail ​would be set for D4vd, who remains in custody.

Earlier on Monday, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said Celeste’s ​decomposed and dismembered remains were found in September 2025 in the front trunk of a Tesla registered to D4vd. She had been ‌missing ⁠for nearly a year and a half when the remains were discovered in the car, separated into two bags, Hochman said.

The vehicle had been parked for weeks in a Hollywood Hills neighborhood before being towed to an impound lot, where workers reported a foul odor.

Hochman said an investigation revealed D4vd was involved in a sexual relationship with Celeste when ​he was an adult and ​she was a minor. ⁠In addition to murder, he was charged with continuous sexual acts, lewd and lascivious sexual acts with an individual under 14 years old and mutilating a body.

The district attorney said ​Celeste was killed in a “brutal and horrific” crime but that he would wait until ​a coroner’s ⁠report was made public before disclosing her cause of death.

Hochman said authorities believed Celeste went to D4vd’s Hollywood Hills home on April 23, 2025, and “was never heard from again.” Prosecutors allege the singer killed Celeste because she threatened to expose their relationship ⁠and pose ​harm to his career.

D4vd gained fame in 2022 after songs he recorded ​on his phone for his Fortnite gaming videos went viral on TikTok, with the hit ‘Romantic Homicide’ helping him sign a deal with Interscope Records. He ​performed at the Coachella music festival in 2025.