Three Pakistani films win honourable mentions at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
Lali, Ghost School and Permanent Guest make their mark among an extensive selection of films from the Subcontinent.
This festival season is proving to be a particularly eventful one for Pakistani filmmakers and another player has entered the arena at the Busan International Short Film Festival (BISFF) in South Korea.
Saman Kamraan premiered her experimental short film The Bed She Made at BISFF on April 24 as part of a showcase of five films by Asian directors dealing with “corrosive forces often embedded within social structures”. It is the only Pakistani film to play at the festival this year. It follows Ali Sohail Jarua’s Murder Tongue screened at the festival in 2022.
Her film shines a light on global warming, overpopulation and a possible link between the two. Exploring the danger of rising temperatures to male and female reproductive health in Pakistan, the film asks if this may be nature’s way of correcting a man-made imbalance.
With a mix of environmental research, anti-natalist philosophy, and the symbolism of the bed as both a biological and cultural site, the film poses a question to the audience: is declining fertility a crisis, a consequence or a correction?
Festival programmer Professor Sébastien Simon described the film for the BISFF catalogue. “Through its interplay of grace and violence, this metaphorical and highly symbolic film alternates between choreographic sequences and stark depictions of domestic oppression. By turning personal suffering into embodied outcry, it confronts the systemic silencing and abusive treatment of women in rigid patriarchal societies.”
Other works in the showcase included Samu The Terrible and His Sin from Indonesia, Central Asian entries The Mayor’s Daughter and The Seventh Month and Thailand’s Lost in Mekong.
While The Bed She Made was the only Pakistani film to make it to BISFF this year, multiple short and feature films have made their mark at festivals recently. In April, the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles recognised Lali, Ghost School and Permanent Guest with Honorary Mentions.
Ghost School will be joining Mera Lyari — Pakistan’s semi-official response to Dhurandhar — and W.R.A.P at the UK Asian Film Festival from May 1 to 10.