Daily Times

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s sons were left with tears in their eyes after watching the upcoming movie of their mother, Jemima Khan.

The movie, “What’s love got to do with it?”, is a cross-cultural romantic comedy that Jemima has used to portray a different and better side of Pakistan — and not the “scary” one.

During an interview, Jemima said that she showed the movie to her children — Qasim Khan and Suleman Khan — who are also her “biggest” critics.

“Their reaction has been the highlight of my whole experience because they are not rom-com lovers and don’t like those kinds of films and they are my biggest critics.”

“Obviously, they are half-Pakistani Muslim kids, so whether they liked it or not was very very important to me,” she said.

“I got them to see it [the film] and […] at the end of it, I could see them being like a little tearful and I also heard them laughing and they said ‘amma we’re so proud of you’,” Jemima revealed.

“And I think, they knew how hard I had worked at it. I literally thought, oh well, even if no one likes it, this is the moment I’m proud of,” she added.

Talking about her inspiration behind the movie, Jemima said she wanted to show another side of Pakistan to the world.

“I wanted to show the colourful, beautiful, joyful place that I knew when I was in Pakistan as opposed to Pakistan we often see on the Western screens,” the filmmaker said. “You know quite often in films such as Zero Dark Thirty and Homeland, you see Muslims and Pakistanis depicted as the baddies and Pakistan is seen as a really scary, dark place.

“And so I got a chance to make the romantic comedy version of Pakistan, with Working Title Film that invested in rom-coms, with a beautiful cast with Sajal Ali who is a beautiful Pakistani actress and very talented Shabana Azmi from India who is an absolute goddess and Lily James who is wonderful and Emma Thomson, Shahzad Latif, and others.”

Jemima shared that one of the best things that she learnt in Pakistan was to develop faith in “niyat” (intention) and she hopes that Pakistanis will judge her film through her “niyat” which is aimed at portraying them as “normal people and not scary creatures”.