Oscars bid for film on ‘ Pakistan’s toughest woman’
Qazi Ahmed, Pakistan: As 200 armed men surrounded their house on a hot August night in 2005, Nazo Dharejo and her sisters grabbed their Kalashnikov and puny stock of ammunition and climbed to the roof. The gunfight which followed earned her the moniker “Pakistan’s toughest woman”, and became the subject of a film which has been entered in next year’s Academy Awards, vying for glory alongside heavyhitters such as Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father
Thelma.
A world away from Hollywood’s red carpet, at the ancestral home Dharejo fought for in Pakistan’s rural Sindh province, she described the night which could lead to Oscar glory.
“I will kill them or die here but never retreat,” Dharejo, now in her late 40s, recalled saying as assailants attacked her home. Her husband begged her to stand down but she refused, facing down her own relatives — who were armed and had long sought to take her family’s property after her father died leaving no male heir, she said. From their position on the roof their tiny army — the three sisters, Dharejo’s husband, and some loyal friends and neighbours — held off the onslaught, with household staff making daring runs for more ammunition until daylight broke. A five- year legal battle over the land eventually saw her foes pay half a million rupees ($ 4,800) in compensation and offer a public apology — an act of utmost disgrace in rural Pakistan.
In 2013 Dharejo’s story came to the attention of a British- born Pakistani filmmaker, Sarmad Masud. Fascinated, he got in touch.
The result is My Pure Land, the 98- minute Urdulanguage film version of Dharejo’s story starring Suhaee Abro, which became the UK’s official entry in the Oscar’s foreign language category. It faces tough competition: a record 92 countries have entered this year.