'Wakhri': How a Qandeel Baloch inspired film made it to Saudi Film Festival

The Red Sea Film Festival 2023 is well underway. Several renowned names from the global film industry made their way to Jeddah this weekend to kick off the ongoing film festival - including the makers and cast of Wakhri, a film based on Pakistan's slain social media sensation, Qandeel Baloch. 

Now, the Red Sea Film Fest Head of International Programming, Kaleem Aftab, shares how the film was selected for the festival. "Well, I don’t want to go out on a limb too much before they are shown, but I think people will be very struck by the new film by [Pakistani-US director] Iram Bilal, Wakhri: One of a Kind [which will have its world premiere at the fest and follows a widowed school teacher in Pakistan who becomes a viral sensation overnight when she accidentally unleashes her unabashed opinions on social media]."

Aftab added, "I feel like that is a film that talks about an incident that happened in Pakistan and is changing the narrative on that. I’m also happy to have Zarrar Kahn’s [non-conventional horror film] “In Flames,” also from Pakistan [it is Pakistan’s international Oscar contender], which changed the genre.

“Qandeel Baloch was a raunchy social media star from the poorer masses of Pakistan. Unleashing the brave and provocative; wildly popular and wildly hated. We learned of her exactly a week before she was brutally murdered… by her brother. It was an atypical honor killing because the family was well aware of her ‘ways’ and were also financially gaining from it. It was a new way of experiencing ‘shame.’ It was a new kind of ‘lynching.’ It was an incredibly horrific perfect storm brewing, in huge part, by immense social media trolling and in part by the indefatigable patriarchal society we live in,” Bilal said in a statement as well. 

“What triggered the writing of this story was her resilient and irreverent spirit. We strangely couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was severely personal – this feeling of defeat and the brewing anger that was simmering in our hearts. Any woman who owned her story and dared to occupy a public figure avatar in Pakistan, even if online, was hated and silenced. All that she would be defined as was in correlation to her father, brother or husband," the filmmaker added.

"She did not dare speak up or be defined as her person. Further, we observed that while acknowledging Qandeel’s death, some self-identifying feminists shockingly lacked empathy towards her. It made us realize that the flawed understanding of ‘honour’ ran far deeper in our culture than we cared to admit. We’d already lost friends to this narrative,” Bilal said.

“However, the militant optimist zeitgeist in us did not want to write a story without hope. We don’t want to glorify an honour killing. We want to make a film where we gave the Pakistani audience, the world’s audience, a second chance to possibly save her," the award-winning director shared. "This is the genesis of ‘Wakhri,’ a fictional story inspired by Qandeel’s story but also not limited to her fight, a study to track the correlation between hate crimes and social media wildfires. This film is an ode to all those women in the shadows who were inspired by her bravery. We wish to blow wind beneath the wings of all the women who want to be seen and heard.”

Wakhri boasts a star-studded cast including Faryal Mehmood, Gulshan Majeed, Saleem Mairaj, Sohail Sameer, and Shees Sajjad Gul. Moreover, it features the musical talents of names like Ali Sethi, Meesha Shafi, Eva B, Natasha Noorani, and more. The film not only showcases the talent of renowned actors but also features special appearances from Mathira, Khalid Malik, and Waseem Hassan Sheikh. 

Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.