Pakistan animation film vies for top Academy Awards

LONDON: Pakistani composer and animator Usman Riaz has said that his animation film The Glassworker is a labour of love and he is overjoyed that his film is contending for the Best Animated feature at Academy Awards.

“This has brought Pakistani animation to the global stage and we are thrilled,” Usman Riaz told Geo at the London screening of his film at a Soho theatre, attended by a large number of people including film critics.

Usman Riaz said that it took him 10 years to make The Glassworker, of Geo Films. “This is a seminal hand-drawn animation feature. At Mano Animation Studios, we had to build the infrastructure from scratch to create Pakistan’s first animated film.

Produced by Khizer Riaz, Manuel Cristobal (Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles), directed and written by Riaz and co-writer Moya O’Shea, the story revolves around Vincent (Sacha Dhawan) and his father Tomas (Art Malik), whose peaceful life running a glasswork shop in a small town is disturbed by conflict sweeping down from the north. The father and son’s relationship is tested when Vincent falls in love with Alliz (Anjli Mohindra), a talented violinist who is the daughter of the newly stationed colonel (Tony Jayaward). Their desire for one another and their creative souls are an affront to a harsher sensibility fuelled by patriotism, where tradition would deny Vincent and Alliz’s love.