DUKHTAR IS ABOUT ANOTHER MUSLIM GIRL TRAPPED BY TRADITION
Among recent films focusing on how “women’s lib” is needed in some Islamic countries, The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008) is perhaps the most tragic. Last year’s Difret was more hopeful, reporting how arranged marriage kidnappings and rapes were recently banned in Ethiopia, but that is not a Muslim country. In this year’s Dukhtar (Daughter), directed by Afia Nathaniel, innocent 10-year-old Zainab (played by Saleha Arif) is betrothed to Tor Gul (Abdullah Jan), as arranged by her father to resolve a bloody feud between families living in mountainous Pakistan. But Zainab escapes before the wedding with her mother, Allah Rakhi (Samiya Mumtaz), who is a victim of an earlier arranged marriage. While both Zainab’s father and Tor Gul try to track them down, they are fortunately picked up on the road by truck driver Sohail (Mohib Mirza), a disenchanted former mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan, who finds sanctuary for them with his brother in another mountainous ridge of northwest Pakistan. Although Sohail tries to develop a romance with Rakhi, she is homesick for her mother in Lahore, so the trio goes there to visit during a festival. But being in public is no place for a betrothed girl to hide, and a happy ending is not in the script. For portraying the tragic life of females in rural Pakistan, the Political Film Society has nominated Dukhtar as best film on human rights of 2015. The Political Film Society does not give awards to documentaries, but the simultaneous release in Los Angeles of He Named Me Malala, based on the activism of 2014 Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, strikes the same chord. MH