Ramchand Pakistani Wins Indian Hearts

Pakistani director Mehreen Jabbar’s critically acclaimed film Ramchand Pakistani is receiving accolades throughout India when it premiered at New Delhi’s Osian Cinefilm Festival. Though the film is not without its share of stereotyping, it has some excellent performances by the young boy who plays Ramchand, and Nandita Das as the mother of Ramchand. This utterly human tale of a Hindu dalit family in Pakistan is a debut feature film by young Pakistani director Mehreen Jabbar, who has been directing shorts and teleserials before this. The film makes a strong political statement on the irony of geographical borders yet endearingly narrates the story of a young boy Ramchand who accidentally crosses over to India. His father follows him, and both are imprisoned since quite obviously all is never well between the two neighbouring countries. Producer of the film Javed Jabbar along with his distributor , Percept Pictures , plans to release the film in India next month . He says, “Ramchand Pakistani is a ‘human document, it’s also an assertion of the Pakistani identity which I hope would not be seen as uni dimensional anymore.”