JEDDAH: The story of two women taking up the cudgels against the opposing forces of the society that surround them is Pakistan’s second feature film offering at the Red Sea International Film Festival. In Flames is women-centric story with two women at the centre of all the action. It depicts a single mother and her daughter trying hard to survive in a patriarchal set-up after the death of the matriarch of the family.

The film premiered on the fifth day of the Jeddah festival. It revolves around a medical college student Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) who transforms from a confident girl to petrified one suffering from trauma after being involved in an accident that killed her boyfriend Asad (Omar Javaid) and her mother Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar). Fariha is also finding it hard to fend for the family after losing her father—an honest police officer who did not leave much for his family.

The movie is culturally specific revolving around the everyday issues, including sexual harassment, women face in a patriarchal cultural milieu. The first half of the film is great as it happens in most cases in our part of the world with some excellent cinematography, especially the road and beach scenes sequences. Both the start of the film as well as its end are the high points while the movie seems to lose track a bit in the middle and the climax when the conflict and tension rise.

In the middle of the film, the implausibility issues surface, exposing the flaws in the script which some superb acting as well as ending try to redeem. The confusion was caused by elements of trauma and horror when only the former could have fared well as the latter looks like half-cooked that appears at the end while it is negligible at the beginning and in the middle.

Bakhtawar Mazhar ‘goes deep’ in her portrayal of a single mother

Acting, especially both the women in the lead, comes as, just like Wakhri, the saving grace of the movie. All the actors played their roles well courtesy the actors and the director, Zarrar Kahn, who makes his directorial debut with this movie.

An Indian film aficionado in the festival raised a question as to why Pakistani and Indian filmmakers don’t make movies that portray good aspects of society and take the same to the festival instead of harsh realities of life.

At the premier of the film at Vox Cinema, Red Sea Mall, Shant Joshi said the project began with Bakhtawar Mazhar who was involved in a short film called Dia—the short form version of In Flames. He said Zarrar (the director) took the producer on board before taking the project to the project market where he (Joshi) found it. He said they started discovering more of the horror elements after the sales agent got involved and they built on the haunting element to horror from there onwards. It somehow shows in the film that a horror element was inserted in the story later on as it does not come naturally.

Film as a statement

Bakhtawar Mazhar is perhaps the only actor whose two films premiered in the Red Sea International Film Festival. She has an important role in the Wakhri—One of a Kind, and her character is also one of the main roles in In Flames.

Bakhtawar comes from the National Academy of Performing Arts where she did theatre and taught the art of acting. She has performed theatre at the National School of Drama in India.

Talking to Dawn exclusively on how she got involved in the project of In Flames, she says, “Zarrar, at the start, communicated with me through emails and told me he wanted me onboard for his first film”.

The film just borrowed some elements from the short film like the mother-daughter relationship or the harassment scene with the faith healer but stories of both the films are very different, she says when asked about the mother she played in both the films.

About the start of the project, she said, “It was in 2018 and I was apprehensive that it might take time. During Covid, he took me along as he discussed characters during the writing of the first drafts.”

“It was my very first film but it’s just a chance that both my films were released close by and were screened together. I had finished shooting In Flames when Abid (Merchant) contacted me for Wakhri whose shooting was completed in November,” she said.

Asked about similarities in the characters, she argues both the characters are different as in In Flames the character is that of a suppressed woman while in Wakhri, the character is quite confident and secure.

“But I want to play different characters, including negative and romantic, not just of a mother. I am a theatre-trained actor and we play all sorts of roles in theatre,” she said.

Earlier at the screening, she said the real horror of the film for her was the theme of struggles that women face everyday in life not only in Pakistan but all around the world.

“I love that mother and daughter come together to solve their problems without depending on any man. It’s a Pakistani story, shot in Karachi, Pakistan and written by a Pakistani and it’s a statement that we want to make here,” she said.

The film has been released in Pakistan and is being screened in theatres.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2023