It was disheartening to see a couple of films getting banned by the federal government. First it was Ashir Azeem’s Maalik which had to face the wrath of the authorities for showing politicians in a negative light. Then came the turn of a documentary on the Lal Masjid situation titled Among the Believers which had already been shown in 20 countries, followed by another docu made on the plight of the Hazara community.

Now the thing is that with two of them it was a case of the government having an afterthought, especially in the case of Maalik. The film had already been in cinemas for three weeks, which meant that the Censor Boards must have seen, passed and approved of its content. As far as the logic given by the government goes, that it had been receiving public complaints about the movie goes, the Censor Board needs to change, because if it can’t preempt a situation then it needs to rethink its working.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 8th, 2016