KARACHI: It is challenging to find a “brave” producer in Pakistan who could experiment with horror films amid the local industry’s inclination toward romantic comedies, director of award-winning Pakistani short horror film ‘Gulabo Rani’ said on Thursday.
Gulabo Rani, which was shot in Pakistan’s twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, recently won seven more international awards after winning the first two last year. The film received awards for Best Horror Short Film, Best Sound Design, Best Director Male and Best Cinematography at the Independent Shorts Awards festival in Los Angeles. Gulabo Rani also won big at the Indie X Film Fest L.A. as well as the Indie Short Fest L.A.
The 35-minute short film follows the life of a young boy, Akhtar, who is “accepted into a 150-year-old university,” according to the film’s synopsis. He is housed in the dilapidated “Wing C” of the dorms and learns stories of haunting and despair that are associated with the long-abandoned wing. The movie depicts the boy’s experience with paranormal events far greater than he could have ever imagined.
“There is room for every kind of genre [in Pakistan] but the problem is, we don’t get producers for such [horror] films,” Usman Mukhtar, the film’s director and co-producer, told Arab News on Thursday.
“We have made a formula of romantic comedies, so everyone makes that. In between, a brave producer comes up who wants to make a good action film, but we have kept horror at a distance [for a long time]. Nobody wants to experiment with horror.”
Gulabo Rani is an independent film, produced by Mukhtar’s production house, Eastern Terrestrial Studios, which he formed last year.
Mukhtar said he hoped to pitch the movie as a feature film and find a good producer for it. So far, he said, the film had had two private screenings that generated a great response from viewers.
Gulabo Rani, according to its director, will release on YouTube in March 2023 for viewers in Pakistan and globally as there aren’t many OTT platforms in the South Asian country to showcase it.
“When we were making [the movie], we had no idea we would be sending it to film festivals. Now, we have won nine awards for it,” Mukhtar said.
Zunaira Inam Khan, who added to the script written by Ali Mudar, shared she wanted to take the genre seriously and handle it “subtly.”
“Horror, as a genre, never seems to be done right in this region [sub-continent],” Khan told Arab News.
Khan said this was an idea that Mukhtar had come up with after hearing of a real-life incident that happened to someone he knew. He’d built upon that incident and taken creative liberties, but the basic premise was true, she said.
“It was important to create a film that reflects what a good horror film should [look like]. Not just comedy or jump scares. To remain true to the essence of the story, we wanted to tell and just focus on real, spine-chilling horror,” Khan said.
“It was important that the audience is left with this foreboding feeling that something like this could happen to any of them.”
Usama Javaid Haider, who essays the lead, is the youngest actor from Pakistan to have won an international award.
“Representing Pakistan is one of my milestones and I felt very proud when I heard that I’m the youngest one who got an international award for Best Actor in Pakistan,” he told Arab News on Thursday.
Haider said he started acting in theaters in 2010 when he was nine years old. He has appeared in short films, such as ‘Gone’ by Rasheed Azfar Shah, ‘No More Love’ by Iqbal Shah, and ‘Ghazanfar Ali’ by Sadam Malik.
“None of the projects caught people’s attention, hence Gulabo Rani makes me so happy and I feel very grateful for being a part of this classic project,” Haider added.
