Saqlain Soomro

The film opens with Haider playing with his nieces and suddenly he gets a call from hospital – his sister in law is about to give birth. The tragedy struck when again they witness the birth of a girl. Haider is only member of his family whose existence is ignored – he is ghost- mainly […]

When you ask a film critic that, whose film was highly denounced by critics, the name Guru Dutt and his Kaagaz ke Phool spring to mind. Guru Dutt’s final film, Kaagaz Ke Phool, was released in 1959. It was his most personal film since it contains semi-autobiographical glances into his life. His personal narrative was […]

The best way to demonstrate a hero’s true bravery is to pit him against a wicked adversary. The villain always outweighs the hero in power. Villain is hero’s partner in carrying forward the film’s narrative and provides the reasons for good old punch-up. The rivalry of Maula Jatt and Noori Natt is notorious not only […]

Have you ever considered that in the far future, rather than competing for our exterior beauty, we would be an oriented beauty pageant that focuses on our inner beauty or our inner bodily parts, such as our lungs, liver, and other organs, and tattoo them? Or consider the possibility of our evolved generation ingesting plastics […]

In his candid-talk, filmmaker Satyajit Ray said, “We have a fairly backward audience I must say, in spite of the film society movement. If you consider the larger audience in India, it’s a backward audience.” The criticism is also directed at Pakistani viewers, who are unable to think outside the box and the blame is […]

Every detail written in this article was narrated to me by my father Basharat Ali Soomro. It’s the pre Zia era; Camel carts are carrying huge posters of movies to be embellished at 20 different cinemas of Hyderabad. Along with a cart can be seen a 6ft person known as Badamani, pretending and attired as […]

In 2018, Clint Eastwood, then 88, directed a movie ‘The Mule’ in which he played a lead of horticulturist based on the story of World War II veteran Leo Sharp. In 2021, at the age of 91, Eastwood came up with Cry Macho, where again he played the lead role and directed it. This shows […]

Mark Twain once said, “Everyone is a Moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” A Cherokee story resembling to these lines were read by me recently in the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. […]