Pakistani documentary Armed With Faith brings home an Emmy award

The 40th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards have come to an end and Pakistani filmmaker Asad Faruqi has bagged an award for his documentary Armed with Faith.

The director received the Emmy for Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary.

The doc follows the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bomb Defusal Squad, showing the lives of three members of the squad and the risks they put themselves in to save the day with little to no specialised equipment.

Images got in touch with the one of the producers, Haya Fatima who shared, "The film has had a deep impact on me and the way I look at Pakistan and the kind of work that Pakistanis do to basically make our lives a little bit more safe by endangering their own lives."

"Whenever there's an article on the news about a bomb being defused at some place, it doesn't get that much attention but I notice that story and I'm so happy thinking that there was someone in some bomb defusal unit that risked their life and was successful."

She went on to say, "When you see up close how people like Abdur Rahim and Tiger Bhai [two members of the squad] spent their lives just essentially giving away all the hours of the day inside the residential quarters of a police station, having little to no contact with their family members despite living in the same city."

"They also know the responsibility they bear; these are people who aren't paid their worth but continue on the path because they want to be honest workers doing what's right for their country. They don't want to quit, sure it's their only source of income but they take pride in their work."

She added, "But it does hurt me to say that I don't think these hard workers are being compensated by the establishment and it's not fair. I think it is time for a conversation to start in Pakistan about how much we value our people who work in really risky jobs, who never get the perks and privileges in their jobs that they deserve."

"And it's time for us to ask and to push and to demand our government to look at how we treat our policemen, specially people in the police who work in incredibly challenging areas such as defusing bombs in places like Khyber Pukhtunkhwa where the fight against terrorism has been even more cumbersome and even more taxing as compared to all the other provinces in Pakistan."

Co-producer Sharmeen Obaid also shared the happy news, congratulating Faruqi on his achievement.