‘Today I give you to the audience of the world’: Maula Jatt director Bilal Lashari sends off his dream film
Films are never just films, behind the seamless onscreen storytelling is a team of people working really hard to get it right. Director Bilal Lashari is ready to send off his dream project after a decade-long journey. He penned a letter to his film, saying his goodbyes. The Legend of Maula Jatt is ready to go out into the world and he’s ready to let it.
He shared a picture of him silhouetted against the light at the premiere on Thursday. Addressing his dear film he wrote, “An impossible dream, that is who you were a decade ago. Today you are for real, no more a figment of my imagination or a project of a dreamer. What a journey it has been! How do I describe you? My mentor, my dearest friend, the one who brought to me binding friendships, a dream team and a lifetime of stories that will outlive life itself?”
After expressing how the film changed his life, he talked about moving on to the next dream. “But every storyteller, every dreamer has to part with the story told, the dream realized, so my friend today I give you to the audience of the world. You belong to them now so live your life among them,” he wrote. “Tonight it’s finally time for me to let you go. And you have to let me go to dream again an untold story of another realm.”
A reboot of Yunus Malik’s 1979 cult classic Maula Jatt, the film is a re-telling the story of the rivalry between Maula Jatt and Noori Natt and is set to release in cinemas on October 13.
The Legend of Maula Jatt stars Fawad Khan, Hamza Ali Abbasi, Mahira Khan, Humaima Malick, Mirza Gohar Rasheed, Faris Shafi, Ali Azmat, Nayyer Ejaz, Shafqat Cheema, Raheela Agha, Zia Khan and Saima Baloch. The Punjabi film is being produced by Ammara Hikmat’s Encyclomedia and Lashari Films. The distribution will be done by Nadeem Mandviwalla under Mandviwalla Entertainment.
The big-budget film has faced several delays and is finally being released after production was begun in 2017.