I have not degraded the state in Abdullah, says director Hashim Nadeem
Until recently, film censorship in Pakistan was mostly limited to Bollywood and Hollywood productions, because, let's be honest, there weren't that many films being produced within Pakistan.
But now, with a sudden uptick in film production, it appears that Pakistani filmmakers are just as likely to face the wrath of the censor board, which claims that certain filmmakers have attempted to explore novel, unchartered, and well, controversial territories.
The first local film in the recent past to be refused screening by the Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) was Resham's much-awaited comeback venture Swaarangi. The board stated the film was "not recommended for screening in its present form", implicitly disapproving of its content and thus banning it.
However, the film sailed through the Punjab and Sindh censor boards without any objections to its content. Eventually the central board too cleared it for screening only a couple of days before its release nationwide.
There are reports that a second film has faced the wrath of the central censor board (in Islamabad, with the capital and cantonments in its jurisdiction).
The film in question is Hashim Nadeem's Abdullah: The Final Witness.