Khuda Ke Liye
Mansoor, Fawad Khan, Iman Ali, Austin Marie Sayre, Naseerudin Shah;
Director : Shoaib Mansoor
One fine day, two Lahore-based brothers who have sung and played together all their lives, go their different ways: one leaves for the US to study music, the other is steered towards an Islam that espouses radical solutions to all problems. Khuda Ke Liye, the first Pakistani film to release in India , and perhaps the first Pakistani film to address such vital, pressing issues, uses small lives to tell a very big story--of identity, religion, nationality, and humanity.

In the US, Shaan (Mansoor) falls in love with a white American girl Janie (Austin Marie Sayre). Back home, younger brother Sarmad (Fawad) takes to growing his hair, wearing skull caps, frowning upon the liberal practices of his parents, and listening to the persuasive poison spewed by the local maulvis. Into this simmering situation arrives their cousin, the half-British, London-born Mary/ Maryam (Iman Ali), chaperoned by her father, who is intent upon marrying his daughter off against her wishes: she has a British boy-friend, and he (the father) can't have that, can he, despite the fact that he himself lives with a white woman.

First-time director Shoaib Mansoor criss-crosses three countries--America, England, and Pakistan (as well as neighbouring Afghanistan) in the aftermath of 9/11, picking up on the insecurities, the prejudices, and the hypocrisies people around the world live with. Shaan is imprisoned by the authorities in the US, and tortured: the American who hurts and humiliates him, only wants to know where 'Osama' is (he leaves out the 'bin Laden' part: maybe he doesn't know his full name, because he looks just the kind of vicious ignoramus who knows how to knock the stuffing out of innocents in the name of justice). But Mansoor is careful to include reasonable, aware Americans too: Shaan's girl-friend leads a protest to free him.

Our own Naseer plays a crucial cameo, of the voice of reason. Could it be that none of the veteran actors in Pakistan wanted to play the part? Naseer's maulana, as devout as the next man, interprets the Koran the way liberal, educated Muslims around the world like to, and frees Maryam to lead her own life, not as mere chattel owned by the man who marries her.