How a film inspired by Qandeel Baloch made it to the Saudi Film Fest

The Red Sea Film Festival 2023 is underway. Several big names from the global film industry descended on Jeddah this weekend to kick off the ongoing film festival – including the makers and cast of Wakhri, a film based on slain Pakistani social media sensation Qandeel Baloch.

Now, Red Sea Film Fest’s Head of International Programming, Kaleem Aftab, shares how the film was selected for the festival. “Well, I don’t want to go too far before they come out, but I think people will be very impressed by the new film from [Pakistani-US director] Iram Bilal, Wakhri: Unique [which will have its world premiere at the fest and follows a widowed school teacher in Pakistan who becomes a viral sensation overnight when she accidentally unleashes her unabashed opinions on social media].”

Aftab added, “I feel it’s a film that talks about an incident that happened in Pakistan and changes the narrative on it. I’m also happy to have Zarrar Kahn [non-conventional horror film] “In Flames”, also from Pakistan [it is Pakistan’s international Oscar contender]that changed the genre.

“Qadiel Baloch was a mischievous social media star from the poorest masses of Pakistan. Unleashing the brave and defiant. wildly popular and wildly hated. We learned about her exactly a week before she was brutally murdered… by her brother. It was an informal honor killing because the family knew her “ways” well and also profited financially from it. It was a new way of experiencing “shame.” It was a new kind of “lynching”. It was an unbelievably horrific perfect storm created, in large part, by massive social media trolling and in part by the relentlessly patriarchal society we live in,” Bilal also said in a statement.

“What sparked the writing of this story was its resilient and irreverent spirit. Surprisingly we couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was strictly personal – that feeling of defeat and anger that boiled in our hearts. Any woman who owned her story and dared to assume a public figure avatar in Pakistan, even online, was hated and silenced. All of which will define her as she was in relation to her father, brother or husband,” the director added.

“She didn’t dare speak up or be defined as her own person. Additionally, we noticed that while we acknowledged Qandeel’s death, some self-identified feminists were shockingly unempathetic towards her. It made us realize that the wrong understanding of ‘honor’ was much deeper. into our culture than we wanted to admit. We had already lost friends to this narrative,” Bilal said.

“However, the militantly optimistic viewer in us did not want to write a story without hope. We don’t want to glorify an honor killing. We want to make a film where we have given the Pakistani audience, the world audience, a second chance to save her,” said the award-winning director. “This is the genesis of ‘Wakhri’, a fictional story inspired by Qandeel’s story but not limited to her struggle, a study to track the correlation between hate crimes and social media fires. This film is an ode to all those women in the shadows who were inspired by her bravery. We want to blow wind under the wings of all women who want to see and hear them.”

Wakhri boasts of a stellar cast including Faryal Mehmood, Gulshan Majeed, Saleem Mairaj, Sohail Sameer and Shees Sajjad Gul. Moreover, it features the musical talents of names like Ali Sethi, Meesha Shafi, Eva B, Natasha Noorani and others. The film not only showcases the talent of the famous actors but also features special performances by Mathira, Khalid Malik and Waseem Hassan Sheikh.

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