Pakistani filmmaker Seemab Gul made Pakistan proud at the HollyShorts Film Festival 2022 with her short film Sandstorm (Mulaqat). The movie landed among the top three films at the film festival.
HollyShorts Film Festival 2022 took place between August 11 to August 20. It is an Oscar-qualifying festival for short-film categories. The winners for the top three awards at the festival, automatically contend for the Oscars.
According to The Wrap, Hallelujah won the Grand Prix for the festival’s best short, Sandstorm (Mulaqat) won for the best live-action short category and Scale won in the category of animation.
One of the film’s producers, Abid Aziz Merchant, announced the win in an Instagram post.
“Mulaqat, directed by Seemab Gul, won at two Academy Award qualifying festivals HollyShorts and Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival in August 2022 which coincidentally is also the month we celebrate the 75th Independence Day of Pakistan.”
Produced by Seemab Gul and Abid Aziz Merchant as a collaboration between Sanat Initiative and Instinct Productions, Sandstorm cast Hamza Mushtaq, Parizae Fatima, Ayesha Shoaib Ahmed, and Nabila Khan.
The short film centers around a teenage girl named Zara. Her seemingly normal life takes a turn for the worse when she shares a sensual dance video with her virtual boyfriend. Said boyfriend then begins to blackmail her into meeting him in person.
“Will Zara give in to this stranger’s increasing demands or will she set herself free?”
It’s interesting how there’s another short film titled, I Think I Have A Crush On You, that addresses an almost the same issue. The movie is about online grooming and follows a teen girl named Nadja.
As their flirtation online grows, William wants more and persuaded the girl to send undress in a video chat, which then leads to him blackmailing her over that instance.
According to the New Yorker, back in May, this sounds like a real life instance. It’s the story of an Egyptian girl that inspired this short film.
“In 2009, Ghadeer Ahmed, an Egyptian teenager recorded a video of herself dancing in a short dress at her friend’s house, the kind of thing girls would do in private, behind closed doors, … She shared the video and some photographs with her boyfriend. Three years later, after they had broken up, he started sending her threats. If she didn’t get back together with him, he’d post the video and photos online. It was this story that inspired Seemab Gul, a filmmaker who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, to make her short film Sandstorm.”
However, Sandstorm explores more the stigma abd judgement that young girls face for exploring their own bodies. While men just have a perceived birthright to objectify women.
