Pakistani Short/Drama
Zarda
“Zarda” (Sweet-rice, a local desert in Pakistan) is a slice-of-life, Docufiction film. We peek into the life of a young Pakistani teenage girl Shella who comes from a conservative, lower middle-class family but dreams with an open heart. Slowly stepping out into the real world, Shella is fascinated by the ever-changing aesthetic of modern life. One such occurrence accounts to her looking at a girl getting hair dyed pink, leaving her utterly mesmerized and longing for something like that for herself. Unfortunately, her cultural norms and lack of bodily autonomy renders it impossible until she is forced to realize and challenge these norms and find her own way out.
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Directed by
Zainab Hassan
Starring
Maria Akram Lashari
Fozia Siddique
Ayesha Mehr
Zahid Rehman
Aleeza Fatima
Amir
Ghadia
language
Punjabi
Urdu
FILMED IN
Lahore, Pakistan
director’s take
Why “zarda”
“Zarda here in our context is usually a celebratory dish, and the way I made this film, I wanted to celebrate the human spirit of life, and fighting back with your circumstances. That’s how I view Shella. No matter where she is, and no matter how hard things get around her, there is this spark of life which I wanted to celebrate through this film! And of course the fact that it’s colored rice just adds a bit more to the general theme of the film. That’s where ‘Zarda’ came from.”
JOJA’S TAKE
The parda in “ZarDa”
“While Shella doesn’t disclose the reason for leaving the house at what seems like an unexplained impulse to leave, her purpose for doing so is intentional. It turns out that Shella does not just freelance while waiting for the bus after school, but she has a job at a salon (where she speaks Urdu).”
trailer
About the Director
Zainab Hassan is a Fulbright Scholar and a documentary filmmaker from Pakistan, currently pursuing an MFA in Documentary Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. She graduated with distinction from the National College of Arts (NCA) in 2022 with a B.A.
While her foundation is in fiction filmmaking, she is increasingly drawn to both traditional and experimental documentary filmmaking, blending real-life stories with creative techniques to push the boundaries of non-fiction.
Her thesis film, Zarda, has been recognized at multiple international film festivals, including the DC South Asian Film Festival, Oscar-qualifying Tasveer
Film Festival.
Zainab is currently in Los Angeles, but when in Pakistan, operate from Lahore or Kot Addu.
