‘A Girl In the River’ screenings for students start

Karachi

Three weeks after the Oscar victory, the short documentary ‘A Girl In the River — The Price of Forgiveness’ by filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy  was screened at the Institute of Business Management (IoBM), on Monday, as part of a series of screenings scheduled to be held at various educational institutions and organisations.

Addressing the practice of ‘honour’ killing, the film which received Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short), is about a woman named Saba who survived a fatal gunshot by her father and uncle for marrying a man of her choice, but was pressurised into forgiving her perpetrators owing to loopholes in the law.

The film which was currently not available for viewing was being screened to get Saba’s story out to a larger audience.

Attended by over 200 students, the documentary received a riveting applause before the floor was opened for a question and answer session with one of the sound designers of the film, Nadir Siddiqui.

After a powerful poetic tribute by one of the students to women who had been affected by such horrific practices prevalent in our society, it was asked whether films highlighting such issues ever reached the economic class not privileged enough to attend screenings or buy DVDs.

However, Siddiqui assured the film was certainly not made with an intention to be sent to the Oscars only, and would be screened on television as well because it was the only medium through which the filmmakers could reach a maximum number of people.  

Before Siddiqui could respond to the clichéd debate over why was a ‘positive’ image of the country not shown, a student sharply countered the question adding that there would not be any positives if the negatives were continued to be covered up, whereas Nadir plainly answered that the SOC had previously done several projects which portrayed a ‘positive’ Pakistan, hinting at how people blissfully wanted to remain ignorant.