Pakistani filmmaker wins Emmy

KARACHI: Two years after Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s documentary Saving Face won an Academy Award, another Pakistani filmmaker has brought Emmy fame to the country. Co-directors Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schelmann’s documentary film Outlawed in Pakistan won the Emmy for ‘Outstanding Research’ under the news and documentary sub-section of the awards. The film was also nominated in the Outstanding Informational Programming-Long Form.

“As a Pakistani filmmaker and journalist I am so pleased and honored that Outlawed in Pakistan won an Emmy last night in New York!  It was a film that took me and co-director Hilke Schellmann five years to make. This was unbelievable and something that I could have never imagined as a little girl growing up in Lahore,” Habiba Nosheen told The Express Tribune.

The documentary focuses on Kainat Soomro, who was raped by four men while she was on her way back home from school in the city of Dadu. The film follows Kainat’s struggle for justice. Pakistani-Canadian Habiba has received several other awards including the Gracie Award for Outstanding Correspondent and was recognised by the Alliance for Women in Media as a reporter.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 2^nd, 2014.