Malik was our host at this meeting. He is now an established New Yorker having lived in the city with his parents for decades. The New York City Council honoured him last year with the ‘Outstanding Citizen’ award for his film career. He was nominated for the Emmy Award for his TV series Namaste. One of his earliest films, Lonely in America (1991), which he produced and starred in alongside Ranjit Chowdhury, was among the first to look seriously at the Indian diaspora, screened in over 30 festivals. Malik has worked as actor in several films and also line produces films being shot in New York and its surrounds.
Mehreen Jabbar, who in her mid-30s looks a sprightly, attentive collegian, is from Karachi, where her interest in theatre and film was nurtured in an advertising agency. She studied at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and now lives and works as a filmmaker out of New York. She is a 14-year veteran of the industry, with a prolific career as a director/producer of hard-hitting films for Pakistan television.
At the start of our introductions Mehreen said how excited she was at presenting her film at the Osian’s-Cinefan festival in Delhi next month, where she will be present. Based on actual events, the film tells the story of a Pakistani Hindu boy and his father who accidentally cross the border into India from their village in Pakistan at a time of extreme war-like tension between the two countries. Father and son end up spending four years in an Indian prison. They disappear overnight from the mother’s life. Alone and vulnerable, she struggles to survive on her own. Mehreen underlined the hardships, both physical and in the technical area, of shooting in the remote Thar Desert, the location of an essential part of the film.
Mehreen’s film has proved to be a major debut work. It has already screened in competition at the Tribeca film festival in New York and at the Seattle film festival. But coming to India with the film has a special connotation for Mehreen. She says, “This is possibly the first film in Pakistan, certainly the first post-1971 (after the loss of East Pakistan) in which the central characters of a Pakistani film are Pakistani Hindus. It attempts to link the commonality between the people of the two countries”. The film also has other Indian connections. Nandita Das plays a lead role alongside Pakistan actors Rashid Farooqui, Syed Fazal Hussain, Maria Wasti, Noman Ijaz and Navaid Jabbar. Leading music director Debajyoti Mishra has scored the background music. Three of its four background songs are rendered by Shubha Mudgal. Aseem Sinha has co-edited the film with the director.
The film is under negotiations for an early release in India.
