KARACHI: Now that the weather situation in the city has improved considerably, it seemed appropriate on the part of the promotion team of the film Carma to hold its premiere at Nueplex Cinema on Thursday evening. As it usually happens, the event was attended by a good number of film and TV journalists. After all, the movie is dubbed a ‘revenge’ thriller and its director Kashan Admani enjoys a good reputation among his contemporaries as a musician; so his admirers were eagerly waiting to see what he’s done by going behind the camera as a storyteller.
The cast of the film, which releases nationwide on Friday, includes Adnan Siddiqui, Osama Tahir, Naveen Waqar, Lili Caseley, Paras Masroor, Zhalay Sarhadi, Khaled Anam and Arjumand Rahim. One or two of them were either missing or arrived late for the premiere. Overall, it was a well-attended programme.
The writer and producer of Carma, Fawad Hai, appeared to be the busiest on Thursday interacting with whoever sought his opinion on the film.
Talking to Dawn about the movie, he said, “It’s a revenge crime thriller. I don’t think such a thing has ever been attempted in Pakistan before. No one has made a revenge crime thriller and I say that because I haven’t seen any such effort. We have a great ensemble cast. The director, my partner Kashan Admani, is also the co-producer of the project.”
On the question of the box office success of the film, because ever since Covid-19 hit the world businesses have been affected by it, he replied, “This is a passion project for us. It would be good to earn money but that’s not our priority. Our priority is to entertain everyone.”
At 9:15pm all the invitees walked into the cinema hall where the movie was shown to them. One of the immediate reactions to the first half an hour or so of the movie, at least of this writer, was: the makers are admirers of American film-maker Quentin Tarantino, someone who has won Oscars as a screenplay writer and yet to win one as director. Reason: his dialogue can be more dazzling than the visuals that he shows on screen.
Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2022
