Even though I was an hour late, I feel I was still too early as I enter the 14th floor apartment with a small chalked blackboard that read ‘Laal Kabootar Meeting’.
Entering the unfussily decorated space, I wave at a journalist friend who was in the midst of her interview with the film’s lead pair, Mansha Pasha and Ahmed Ali Akbar. At their backs, a full-sized rendition of the film’s title is oil-painted on the wall. The room is big, yet negligibly furnished, with only three small chairs and a poster of the film on a wall in the middle of the room.
One corridor to the left, a small adjacent office space, is set up as a makeshift waiting area. A copy of Notes on Directing is deliberately laid on a tabletop near a small sofa; its pages yellowing and deliciously acidic (if you haven’t smelled or nibbled a good old book, you don’t know what you’re missing). A whiteboard with the film’s shot-list in coloured markers stands partially hidden behind a table. A paperback of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rests on top of three other books in the top-shelf of an open rack. These small, deliberately placed details fill in a lot of answers. I may be talking to a smart bunch who may know what they are talking about.
The audience has high hopes from director Kamal Khan’s debut feature Laal Kabootar, lined up for release on March 22. Icon finds out what sets the film apart from this year’s other scheduled releases
The apartment belongs to producers Hania and Kamil Chima, a Harvard-educated brother-sister duo who, inexplicably, pursued filmmaking. Their first film, Laal Kabootar, a thriller, is due out on the 22nd of this month.
“It’s a desi, murder mystery, crime drama — an entry into Karachi’s darker side,” Kamil tells me as we start the interview.