Daily Times

Even though the Pakistani film censor board is notorious for making cuts to movies and banning movies even after issuing exhibition certificates, it now seems that there are some censor boards in countries considered ‘liberal’, which may be stricter than at home.

In a message posted on the social media site Twitter on Thursday, the director of cinema-changing movies such as Waar and The Legend of Maula Jatt, Bilal Lashari, hinted that their experience abroad with his film has not been what one may consider at home. In fact, he suggested that the film censor board in Pakistan may, in certain circumstances, may be more liberal.

On Thursday, Bilal Lashari announced that the second version of his record-breaking movie, The Legend of Maula Jatt is due for release in British cinemas this weekend.

He shared a poster with the list of cinemas where the movie is set for screening. While some of the areas may not be hotspots of the 178,000 Pakistanis living in the UK, it presents people there another chance to watch the movie, and perhaps a different version than what they had seen before.

“Uncut 18+ ‘full version’ releasing on December 2 across UK,” he wrote. Lashari explained that the previous version played in England was censored. “UK censor is strict, so we had to cut or tone down the violence here and there,” he said.

Lashari’s previous version of the movie screened in the UK carried a rating of 15. Now, the uncut version will carry a rating of 18+ and a label of “strong, gory, violence.” According to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), when released in October, the film’s distributors sought a lower rating of 15. But for that, they had to make some cuts to the movie.

“One or more of the releases in this collection was cut.”

The distributor then chose to make cuts to scenes of the movie with strong, bloody violence to secure their preferred ’15’ classification. “Cuts were made in accordance to BBFC Guidelines and policy.” The BBFC added that an uncut 18 rating was available, but the distributor did not opt for it.

The distributor has now obtained the 18+ uncut rating to screen the movie after completing an initial run.

The uncut classification was granted on November 30, which allowed it to be screened on December 2.

As per BBFC, there is a significant chunk cut for screening the movie in the UK. The uncut film has a runtime of around 152 minutes and 19 seconds. However, the cut version has a run time of only 151 minutes and 1 second. It showed that around 1:18 minutes were trimmed off the cut version when playing in the UK.

Lashari suggested that the Pakistani version was, compared to the UK version, without overbearing censorship.

“The version played in most countries including Pakistan, North America, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Australia was the full uncut version,” he wrote.