MINGORA: A group of Swat youth screened their first professional movie ‘Azadi’ highlighting the merits of freedom here late Tuesday evening.

The ten-minute short movie, featuring the era between 1857 to 1957, the pre and post-partition Pakistan, has been produced by Nun Saba Pakhtun (NSP) and directed by Saifuddin Haider, a young emerging film-maker in Swat. The equipments were provided by local D Studio.

A large number of youth, senior artists, film-makers and civil society members participated in the launching ceremony.

The movie, according to senior film-makers and artists, is ranked highly professional.

“This is really inspiring to see the level of camerawork, editing, dialogues and graphics of the short movie. They are really talented and it is unbelievable to see the youth producing such an international level project,” said Nasar Sheen, a tele-film director and actor.

Murad, another movie artist who is also a noted painter of Swat, praised the effort and said he was proud to see that young Swati talent could produce such an amazing film.

“The theme of the movie which speaks of the importance of freedom for human beings has been video-graphed in a fantastic story. I am happy to see that all the crew behind and on the scene are the Swati youth,” he said.

Enayatullah, the co-director who also operated as one of the cameramen, said the core objective in making the film was to promote local talent in every category. “Owing to the huge talent in the youth of Swat, the Umbrella Films, a venture of Swat students, provided a platform, and the youth proved their talent to be the best. The music, vocals, artists, technical crew, equipment each and everything is local,” he said.

The movie depicts some short scenes of the migration in 1947. “Azadi is basically a movie-based on patriotism and teaches what the youth must do for their homeland,” said Saifuddin Haider, adding the youth in Swat were doing a great job which should be appreciated and encouraged,” he said.

He added that a short film ‘Paani’ aims to raise awareness of the water problem across the globe.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2016