Award-winning Pakistani Film Opens in New York Today

“Silent Waters” was shown as part of this year’s New Directors/New Films series. Following are excerpts from Elvis Mitchell’s review, which appeared in The New York Times on March 30; the full text is available below. The film opens today at the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village.

“Silent Waters” is several different movies, and most of them feel negligible and meandering, until the film finally packs a wallop. The director, Sabiha Sumar, starts the film in 1979 with a widow, Ayesha, doting on her 18-year-old son, Saleem, who walks around their small Pakistani village with the uncomplicated, bored smile of a milk-fed prince.

“My Saleem was special from birth, and he knows it,” she says with a smile. He secretly carries on with Zubeida, who wants eventually to marry him.

“Silent Waters” takes on more substance when a fundamentalist wind blows in. Two sullen Muslim radicals from Lahore arrive, and their closed-mindedness initially makes them the butts of jokes in the barbershop…