In Pakistan, the word comes with the weight of shame. The scene with the boy dancing in the weird golden outfit uses a really crass, serious cuss word, subtitled in English as faggot. One big challenge was the part of the film when the lead’s friend who owns the DVD store invites him to a shady hang-out. I had to make it look almost like a small news-reel crew trying to film something. I also act on television and in films so I had to avoid attracting attention when filming. What was the biggest challenge for you when shooting the film? I put a line in the trailer about blasphemy and in retrospect I regret it because I just provoked them.
I am a 41 year-old man from the subcontinent so I am part of the politics of this region. is there of course because I come from a context. It is never going to be the way I am as a storyteller. I cannot ever wake up one day and say ‘I am going to make a political film’. I sold it off to make this film.ĭo you consider the film to be controversial?
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It was a one- time luxury I could afford: I had made enough money from TV and had made little investments in property. I thought ‘Okay, I’ll put my own money into it’. To convince someone to put their money into it was a big challenge. It is not melodrama, we wanted to create a quiet mood piece.
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I say it now very immodestly, my film defies a lot of pre-existing notions of screenwriting, or how scripts are written or how to follow a particular genre. financiers do not like anything that falls out with their understanding or solidified notion of what is going to bring the money back, which is essentially comedies or romantic dramas with some songs and dances here. It was a question of timing it because the Prophet’s birthday celebrations which happen on a specific date in the Islamic calendar. It is all on location except the opening scene where he is singing the hymn. It is the city where I have spent most of my life. I shot in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, in the winter of 2018. For a woman to be in this kind of setting and be commanding and run the show. It was not the standard practice.ĭid you enjoy working with your sister Kanwal Khoosat as producer? We didn’t have a plot for the first six or seven months. Because of her lack of training, she didn’t come up with a plot she just came up with characters. She also set the tone for the whole film. We worked on the screenplay together for about a year and a half. I had two centre-pieces – the dance and the apology – and that is all I gave Nirmal Bano. Khoosat talks to Screen about shooting a “quiet mood piece” that doesn’t follow Pakistan’s traditional movie-making tropes. The film made its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival in 2019 where it won the Kim Ji-seok award for the best third film by a director. Khoosat himself took a tiny but pivotal role. Khoosat had taught Bano at Pakistan’s National College of Arts and she had gone on to intern in his company, Khoosat Films.īut making the film outside of Pakistan’s ‘Lollywood’ industry norms meant Khoosat had to finance the film himself by selling property. His sister Kanwal Khoosat, one of the country’s leading theatre and television directors, has made her feature producer debut on the film for Khoosat Films.Ĭircus Of Life stars newcomer Arif Hassan with renowned model Eman Suleman and Ali Qureshi. Spurred by an online video he had seen of a man dancing in a similar manner he teamed with first-time screenwriter Nirmal Bano to turn the idea into a film. Khoosat is one of Pakistan’s best-known actors and film and TV directors. A geo-blocked OTT release on Vimeo meant Khoosat’s film qualified to be submitted to the Oscars.
However the country’s Senate Committee for Human Rights approved the film’s release in July 2020 but with Covid-19 raging, the film didn’t make it into theatres. In a case of life imitating art, the trailer for the film caused uproar among ultra-conservatives and various other religious and political groups in Pakistan and death threats were even made against Khoosat. His standing in the community crumbles, his daughters and neighbours criticise him, and his friends turn their backs. Pakistani director and actor Sarmad Sultan Khoosat has spent the last year living with death threats, attending multiple court summons and dealing with censorship demands in response to his second feature Circus Of Life ( Zindagi Tamasha) Pakistan’s entry to the best international feature category at the Oscars.Ĭircus Of Life chronicles the fallout in the life of a devout elderly man after a video of him dancing, somewhat effeminately, to a popular song goes viral.
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