Arif Hassan’s win at the 6th Annual Asian World Film Festival adds to Zindagi Tamasha’s international recognition

Sarmad Khoosat’s Zindagi Tamasha was a much anticipated film but it landed in a controversy, resulting in a ban on its screening in the country.

Also being called, ‘Circle of Life’, it is a social drama and the trailer shows it to be a commentary on the current political and social climate of Pakistan.

The makers of the film define it as:

“Zindagi Tamasha (Circle of Life) is an intimate portrait of a family as well as a scorching political commentary on the little gods on this earth who police private passions.”

During the promotion of the film and associated press talks, Sarmad has shared that the name of film is referred to Khwaja Perbez’s famous song, Zindagi Tamasha Bani, originally written for an old film, and he has acquired the rights in order to use it. The cast includes; Arif Hasan, Samiya Mumtaz, Ali Qureshi, Eman Suleman and Imran Khoosat.

Despite being banned in Pakistan, the films has been recognized internationally. It has been been screened at the Busan Film Festival and bagged the Kim Ji-seok award. It has also been submitted as Pakistan’s choice for the ‘International Feature Film Award’ category for the 93rd Academy Awards.

In addition to these accolades, Arif Hassan has won the Best Actor award at the 6th Annual Asian World Film Festival.

He plays the role of the protagonist, Rahat, who is a revered naat khwan based in the old walled city of Lahore. A devout Muslim, he has a huge following who see him as above any human error. He can do no wrong. A viral social media video amplifies his error to the extent that there is no forgiveness for him. His fall not only brings him down but makes his family the leapers of their community.

The Asian World Film Festival (AWFF), was founded by Kyrgyz public figure, Sadyk Sher Niyaz. According to their website the festival aims to bring the best of a broad selection of Asian World cinema to Los Angeles in order to draw greater recognition to the region’s wealth of filmmakers, strengthening ties between the Asian and Hollywood film industries. Uniting through cross-cultural collaboration, the festival champions films from over 50 countries across Asia spanning from Turkey to Japan and Russia to India.The festival is unique in that it predominantly screens Oscar and Golden Globe submitted films from Asia for the Best Foreign Language Film.

In today’s global world of entertainment, if Pakistani cinema needs to create a place for itself, it is important that the storytelling goes beyond repetitive ideas. Our stories need to be able to entertain and also create a space for hard hitting subjects of our society to be able to create a healthy space for dialogue within and to tell our stories on our terms.

Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on March 18, 2021.