Updated 10 Aug, 2017 11:58am

Jami bags award at Locarno Festival

Does Jami plan on slowing down anytime soon? By the looks of it, absolutely not.

The filmmaker bagged the Open Doors – TFL (TorinoFilmLab) award at the international film festival, Tuesday evening.

"Well that's very interesting because I was making the video for someone else," Jami laughed as he received the award wearing black and white shalwar kameez. "Again, thank you so much, and this is very surprising, because I really wanted to be part of the next session somehow, somewhere with these people, so this is very interesting. Thank you so much."

Jami posing with his award.

The Open Doors – TFL is a special award in collaboration with Torino Film Lab which aims to develop the winner's contacts at an international level and help initiate commercial negotiations on the projects currently being developed, states the film fest's website.

Jami was one of the two Pakistani producers selected to be part of Open Doors Lab. The other Pakistani producer was Mehnaz Alavi Diwan of Studio Rail Films.

Jami with other participants of the Open Doors initiative from Pakistan.

This award will help Jami seek support for his upcoming projects - under the banner of AzadFilms - Hit and Run(slated for 2019 release), Jugnu (slated for a 2019 release) and 92 Cricket WorldCup (slated for a 2019 release).

The Open Doors Lab celebrated its 15th anniversary this year. The platform is intended for professionals from South Asia to develop contacts and expertise in order for them to produce, distribute and circulate their films outside of their own country and to also help their films reach international screens.

This year the countries in focus were Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who were invited to develop their skills and knowledge about international production.

Locarno Festival is an annual film festival held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. It was founded in 1946 and is one of the longest-running film festivals in the world.

Read Comments