With the recent rise in media attention around rape and sexual assault in Pakistan, many survivors have expressed how hearing such stories has made them relive their own trauma. For anyone who hasn’t been in their shoes, it is impossible to understand what rape survivors go through. Blue: A Kaleidoscope is a film that aims to explore those very feelings and how they are treated by the society around them.
The movie can be watched on Instagram, although its original release was delayed due to lockdown. The release comes at a time when the country is openly speaking against violence faced by women following the rape of a woman on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway and murder of a six-year-old in Karachi’s PIB Colony.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEwR4zunMeV/
The story, which follows the trauma faced by a 10-year girl after she is raped is directed by Daniyal Afzal. The rape is recorded and the video goes viral in her neighborhood.
Blue: A Kaleidoscope is based on a 2015 BBC report, titled ‘How a rape was filmed and shared in Pakistan’, by journalist Amber Shamsi.
ALSO READ
Man Arrested for Attempted Child Rape in Lahore
Danial graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Oregon USA with a degree in Rhetoric & Media Studies. He started his media career while attending Lewis & Clark with internships at Fox News and ABC. Danial returned to Pakistan in 2014 and joined PTV World as a Sports Anchor during which he hosted a show on the FIFA 2014 World Cup. He then landed the role as anchor of the full-fledged show The Young World, which covers youth-related issues in Pakistan. Since 2016, Afzal immersed himself completely in film-making and has bagged numerous laurels for his award-winning short documentary, “The Survivor”.
Women are routinely silenced in Pakistan, said Afzal while speaking to SAMAA Digital. It is about time that we raise our voices against the issues that they face, he remarked.
People generally don’t listen to rape survivors and this is what we have tried to show in the movie, he added.
The short film has been showcased at a film festival in Hong Kong.
