Women’s International Film Festival kicks off

Festival opens with Spanish film ‘Summer 1993’

ISLAMABAD: "Women Through Film", a week long Women’s International Film Festival (WIFF) started in Islamabad late on Monday at Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) with a screening of a Spanish director's debut feature film "Summer 1993".

The film is an intensely autobiographical tale of an orphan confronting the loss of innocence that bereavement brings. She explains how she turned her own childhood into a captivating film. In the summer of 1993, six-year-old Carla Simon was sent to live with her uncle and aunt after both of her parents died from Aids.

With the help of brilliantly raw young actors and clear directorial strength already, Simon has bravely given her own story the narrative of her feature fiction debut, Summer 1993. Before the season is over, the girl has to learn to cope with her emotions and her aunt and uncle have to learn to love her as their own daughter.

The third edition of the WIFF is being organised with the support of the European Union till March 9 while films by women filmmakers from the EU (Spain, Austria, Italy, Sweden, and Bulgaria) will be screened during the festival.

This year the festival will span six days through a fascinating, insightful, and thought provoking programme, curated from the works of female filmmakers from Pakistan and all around the world.

The themes for this year are Child Abuse, Helping Hands, and Sexual Harassment. Women Through Film is a Pakistan-based initiative that aims to encourage and facilitate females to use self-expression and storytelling - through the art of filmmaking - in order to raise their voices, challenge, touch and inspire audiences and create social change.

It is an initiative to celebrate the success stories, struggles, and achievements of inspiring women from all walks of life. We aim to create an army of vocal, confident, fearless, and economically independent female filmmakers who can tell stories about issues that affect them, through film and other interactive media.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2019.