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The film charts the personal quest of a firebrand Pakistani cleric whose schools are training thousands of children to take part in jihad (holy war).
Pakistan has often been branded as “The World’s Most Dangerous Country” and, arguably, it has lived up to this title. The massacre of school children in Peshawar last December is one of the most recent examples of an ongoing ideological war that’s claimed more than 50,000 Pakistani lives in the past ten years. Multiple members of our team have lost people we loved in terrorist attacks.
Hemal: I was born and raised in an inner-city chawl (ghetto) of Mumbai, India, in a conservative Hindu family. Growing up, I wanted to join the Indian army and defend my country. And that’s why I was a part of the student division of the Indian Army (NCC) for three years. Several years after moving to the U.S. to become a filmmaker, I lost a friend in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. After this tragedy, my heart was full of anger and hate for the perpetrators of the crime, who were found to be Pakistanis. To make sense of my feelings I started digging deeper into the root causes of these attacks.
This film took six years to make under touch-and-go circumstances at many points. Throughout, we faced numerous dangers, from being tracked by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies such as the ISI, to having our phones tapped, to receiving thinly-veiled – and at times more overt – threats.
The extremist rhetoric of spiritual leaders like Cleric Aziz can only be challenged by books, not bombs. In other words, education that empowers the next generation can be more effective than any military intervention at combating militancy. Giving children the knowledge and skills they need to be employable, as opposed indoctrinating them with the limiting ideology offered at madrassahs like the Red Mosque, is vital if the next generation is going to escape the cycle of poverty.
Hemal: Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County, USA” inspired me to become a filmmaker. I saw it at a small film club in Mumbai and I was blown away. That was the first time I had ever seen a documentary as emotional and dramatic as a fiction film. That’s when I decided to dedicate my life to non-fiction dramatic storytelling. I was also very inspired by “Grey Gardens” (God bless the late Albert Maysles), which I saw in grad school. It reminded me so much of my relationship with my mother; I cried my eyes out. It showed me that what’s important in a documentary is not the information conveyed, so much as the nuances of human relationships.
We shot mostly on the Panasonic HVX-100. Some of our footage was shot using the Canon 5D, and other lower-quality formats were also used at times in situations that required even greater discretion.
Hemal: I received an MFA from the Documentary Institute at the University of Florida.
Indiewire invited Tribeca Film Festival directors to tell us about their films, including what inspired them, the challenges they faced and what they’re doing next. We’ll be publishing their responses leading up to the 2015 festival. For profiles go HERE.
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