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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 [...]

Adrees Latif, 34, a Pakistani-by-birth photojournalist has won the Pulitzer prize for his photography for Reuters in Myanmar. Adrees’s photograph of the fatal shooting of a fellow journalist, the Japanese videographer Kenji Nagai, won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. Monks and nuns were under fire for their protests against the Burmese government in [...]

Ali Saleem, or Begum Nawazish Ali as known to hundreds of thousands of Pakistani television viewers, remains upbeat about what he or she does best. It’s a message Saleem usually delivers swathed in gorgeous saris and thick makeup, with glitter on his hairless arms and a mischievous lipstick smile on his face. Ensconced in the [...]

‘Ramchand Pakistani’ – a Pakistani film based on the real life drama of a seven-year-old Pakistani Dalit Hindu boy – Rambchand – which is set for an international release early next year, is being critically acclaimed. Written and produced by first-time director Mehreen Jabbar’s father, Javed Jabbar, the film stars Syed Fazal Hussain in the [...]

Nigar Nazar speaks of her creation with obvious affection. “Gogi is a Pakistani woman who wears polka dots ? because I love them.” Though internationally recognized and honoured as Pakistan’s first female cartoonist, Nazar modestly confesses, “I doodled long before I became an artist.” She approached the principal of the Arts Council of Pakistan in [...]

It’s being hailed as the film which has revived a moribund Pakistan cinema. It has received accolades for boldly taking on the fundamentalist Mullah lobby in Pakistan, and the world over, and laying down the real picture. Khuda Ke Liye moves through three countries – USA, England and Pakistan – with the message of tolerance [...]

The notion that Pakistan is more dangerous than Iraq is absurd. I hired a car in Islamabad and headed out onto the partially completed M2 motorway that will eventually connect Lahore (near the Indian border) with Peshawar (the last city on the road to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan). Suicide bombs, battles in tribal areas, [...]

The film, by director Roberto Chile, was presented by Cuban Charge’d Affairs Ivan Mora who said it was a privilege and honor to screen the latest effort of a filmmaker whose camera has captured historic moments of the Cuban Revolution. A documentary film about the work of the Cuban Medical brigade in Pakistan since the [...]

Mughal-e-Azam, or The Great Mogul, is an historical romance made in 1960 in Mumbai but set in Lahore at the time when Muslim leaders ruled India. Film lovers lined up at theatres in Lahore, Pakistan, on Sunday to see the first Indian movie allowed to be screened in the country for almost 60 years. The [...]

Salim’s chiffon-wearing alter ego, Begum (Mrs.) Nawazish Ali, has become an overnight star, using style and pomp to confront prickly topics with Pakistani politicians, Islamic religious figures and celebrities, posing questions that more established journalists routinely steer clear of. Born a boy, Ali Salim long prayed to God to make him a girl. Years later, [...]