She brought home Pakistan’s first-ever Oscar in 2012
She brought home Pakistan’s first-ever Oscar in 2012 and in the three years since, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has gone from being a little-known documentary filmmaker to one of the most influential women in the entertainment industry today. The international media can’t get enough of her and we’ve seen Sharmeen hanging out with the likes of Meryl Streep, Barbara Walters and Harvey Weinstein. It is Pakistan, however, where Sharmeen continues on her mission to break new grounds and give her audiences a taste of the novel.
Animation isn’t a lucrative industry for a country like Pakistan, where cinema is only just beginning to thrive, but that didn’t stop the filmmaker from making 3 Bahadur, the country’s first animated feature length film. The inspirational story about bravery and friendship gave Pakistani children role models they could relate to and it gave the industry a whole new, and hitherto ignored, chapter to explore - children’s films.
Song of Lahore, released in April, has been another one of Sharmeen’s recent triumphs. A documentary about Pakistani musicians and the problems they face in the pursuit of their passion, it was declared a runner up at Tribeca 2015 and won a standing ovation from its international audience.
"Often we view women from my part of the world as victims. We need to have heroes. We need to have strong, brave women,"Sharmeen recently said at an international event. As someone who has always stood by her beliefs and challenged the status quo, the filmmaker is well on her way to fulfilling the need for female heroes with her own actions.