Yasir Hussain’s Javed Iqbal: The Untold Story Of A Serial Killer selected for DC South Asian Film Festival

Despite not getting the green light in Pakistan, Yasir Hussain and Ayesha Omar’s Javed Iqbal: The Untold Story Of A Serial Killer has added another feather to its hat by being selected for the DC South Asian Film Festival. The film will be screened there in November.

Javed Iqbal will be screening at the 11th annual film festival which will be held in Washington DC, US from November 1 to 8 this year.

The event is being organised by the DC South Asian Arts Council. The non profit organisation aims to provides opportunities to South Asian artists around the world to showcase talent, be it films, dance, music, books, theatre, cooking, fashion, painting, or anything else. This year, the film festival will see entries from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Tibet.

Javed Iqbal had its world premiere at the UK Film Festival in May where Hussain bagged an award for Best Actor whereas the director, Ali Sajjad Shah who goes by his alias Abu Aleeha, won the Best Director.

Javed Iqbal was originally supposed to be released in October last year, but the premiere was pushed to December 24 because it was still being cleared by the censor boards. December proved to be unlucky as well — the film’s release experienced yet another delay due to a rise in Covid-19 cases. The release date was then rescheduled to January 28.

With the new date announced, the film had its Karachi premiere at Nueplex Cinema on January 25, attended by the cast and crew as well as other members of the entertainment fraternity. The very next day, the director took to Twitter and shared that the Punjab government had put a halt to the film hitting cinemas. Nearly nine months since it was banned, there’s no update if the film will ever screen in Pakistan.

The film is based on the investigation into Javed Iqbal, the serial killer who killed 100 young boys in Lahore and sent evidence of his crimes to the authorities and media in 1999.