Showcasing a darker side of Karachi, the crime-drama’s director, Kamal Khan, speaks to Instep afterwards about the trailer and the upcoming film.
Earlier this week, the much-awaited trailer of upcoming film, Laal Kabootar, was unveiled to industry insiders as well as members of the press.
Upon first view, words that come to mind - particularly if you are aware of what goes on in the maximum city that is Karachi - are brutal, criminal, dark, mysterious, fantastic (rap) music, and so very Karachi - just not laced with unnecessary one-liners that border on the cliché.
Set to release on March 22, in partnership with Geo, the trailer launch event was attended by the film’s cast and crew including protagonists Ahmed Ali Akbar, Mansha Pasha; supporting cast members Ali Kazmi and Salim Mairaj; the producers, Hania and Kamil Chima; director Kamal Khan and DoP Mo Azmi (who was also the DoP for Asim Abbasi’s Cake).
Apart from the presence of the film’s cast and crew, the event was also attended by Jibran Nasir, Zoe Viccaji, Noor Hassan, Saqib Malik, Adnan Shah Tipu, Angie Marshall, Syed Yorguc Tipu Sharif, Zhalay Sarhadi, Dino Ali, Nazneen Tariq and Ahmer Naqvi.
Produced by Nehr Ghar Films, Laal Kabootar is Kamal Khan’s first full length feature film; Kamal has built a strong reputation for telling grittier stories, a snapshot of which can be seen in his music videos like ‘Wake up/Jaago’, ‘The Desert Journey’ and most recently ‘Mil Gaya’ by Strings.
The censored trailer of the film was showcased at the trailer launch event, Kamal Khan told Instep later, while the Redband trailer, which in layman’s terms is an R-rated trailer, used by films like Deadpool has been created as well.
“Our film will be censored in cinemas but we thought we will take out an uncensored version of trailer for the internet because I hope at some point this film will get to a streaming platform and by uncensored, I mean the language used in the film.”
What we keep forgetting is that using foul language, cuss words in Karachi is so ubiquitous that it’s like a second language people share across the board, so censoring because of language is a thoughtless move. We want our films to get better but we refuse to let them showcase a side that younger audiences will connect to as will mature audiences.
Coming back to the trailer, there is a great deal of mystery within the trailer and it shows that both Ahmed Ali Akbar and Mansha Pasha can shed their skins to get into the skin of characters that aren’t binary.
Cutting the trailer can make one want to watch a film or wait for reviews and word of mouth, something that was not lost on Khan, who cut the trailer himself. The somewhat mysterious trailer is so people are unable to predict the story, noted Kamal.
Kamal Khan explained that actors did audition for the roles, just to see if they could actually play these Karachi characters in a film that is not a mixture of multiple genres but that by no means is a judgment on those who didn’t make the cut.
When asked that Pakistani films tend to introduce multiple genres in one film (comedy, action, love story, stunts like a mixed plate) while the trailer for Laal Kabooter is a palpable landscape of Karachi and whether that is by design, Kamal told Instep, “Yes that is by design. We wanted to make a grittier film, closer to reality and most importantly, a genre film.”
Kamal Khan added: “I feel like crime dramas are darker, grittier and it was something I wanted to attempt, like a Karachi film and to depict it in its truest form. Parts of the city are dark; parts of it are pretty. We wanted to explore the [darker] side and those characters and where it takes us as a result of this film.”
As for the chief protagonists, though they did audition, Kamal told Instep that he always wanted to work with Ahmed Ali, having seen him in a theatre play and because of his sheer dedication to the craft. He did audition though, as did Mansha Pansha.”
We also asked Kamal Khan if the trailer launch event deliberately coincided with the release of Gully Boy or was it incidental. “Our distributor had pointed it out a lot earlier about Gully Boy’s release (it’s fantastic by the way) so we were conscious of it but regardless we planned to put the trailer out around now,” he told Instep.
