Acclaimed Director Aims to Revive Pakistani Cinema

Sabiha Sumar is happy to see her Pakistani film released in North America, but even if it became a Hollywood blockbuster, that wouldn’t be as important to her as seeing it screened in the villages of her home country. In our media-jacked culture, it’s almost impossible to imagine that an entire generation of Pakistanis has, until now, lived without movies. “We’ve had to create a travelling cinema with this film because theatres are hardly there as a result of Islamicism from ’79 onwards,” the director says from Toronto, the closest she will come to Vancouver on a promotional tour.