Pakistani Writer/Director’s supernatural film screens at Comic-Con
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, JULY 21, 2011 – While Pakistan remains in the eye of the storm, a young filmmaker from Pakistan has also been receiving laurels in the U.S and around the world for his powerful film which uses the supernatural to bring focus to the often ignored plight of civilians living in times of conflict. HEAL, a final year thesis film written and directed by Pakistani filmmaker, Mian Adnan Ahmad and produced by Marcus Metsala and Mian Adnan Ahmad is being screened at this year’s Comic-Con as part of the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (CCIIFF). The film has also previously been honored with the prestigious Frank Capra Award at this year’s Fallbrook Film Festival for which Adnan was flown to the U.S in April to receive the award from Frank Capra III himself (grandson of six-time academy award winning film director, Frank Capra, after whom the award is named).
The film was originally submitted as Adnan’s final year thesis project for Chapman University’s MFA in Film Production program where it also received the highest number of awards for a film made that year. Since its final completion in 2010, the film has screened at more than 20 film festivals worldwide, winning 18 awards to date, including receiving the festivals’ highest award multiple times and being the first film by a Pakistani filmmaker to do so, while competing against professionally made short films, documentaries, and feature-length films.
HEAL is set in the conflict regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan and tells the story of how a gifted eight-year-old boy makes an extraordinary effort for his people. The film’s writer and director, Adnan, arrived in the U.S for the first time in 2006. Then, he was a 24-year-old filmmaker from Pakistan, awarded with the Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a graduate program in film at Chapman University, where he would later write and direct HEAL. Cinematography for the film is by Dani Sanchez-Lopez and the film is edited by Yukako Shimada. Production design is done by Prajakta Ghag and the original music composed by Tuomas Kantelinen, with the film’s sounds design completed by John-Kenneth E. Brady and Mian Adnan Ahmad. The cast comprises of established U.S film and television actor, Navid Negahban along with Fereshta Kazemi, Walid Amini and then first-time child actors Ameer Zhowandai and Hannah Sher.
The film screens at CCIIFF at 2:30 pm on Saturday July 23. Adnan is presently in Pakistan but members of the cast and crew will be in attendance to represent the film. More details on the screening can be found here.
To learn more you can visit the official facebook page of Heal.
Watch the teaser trailer below:
