Straight out of Lahore

A scene from the winning film: Doctor Amna Batool refuses to bow to social pressure to get married and instead chooses to help fight the pandemic.

© DW / DAWN

© DW / DAWN

Straightout of Lahore

Omer Nafees is a documentary filmmaker and the winner of the 2020 video story contest by DW and its Pakistani media partner Dawn Media. In his films, Nafees takes his audience deep into parts of the Pakistani society previously unseen.

by Ivana Drmić, DW editor

As the novel coronavirus started to spread, medical professionals quickly came into the spotlight. Documentary filmmaker Omer Nafees shows that their fight on the frontlines against the coronavirus pandemic is most certainly worthy of the attention. In 2020, Nafees’ film “Unbound Breath” won the video story contest organized by Dawn Media and DW in Pakistan. In his film, Nafees takes the audience through a day in the life of doctor Amna Batool, a young woman who is pursuing a career instead of settling down as expected by society. Batool decides to join the coronavirus ward despite suffering from asthma.

Nafees’ documentaries are based on authentic people, he says and therefore, “they belong to the people.” Growing up in Lahore, Nafees was a strong observer of society from an early age and started to capture neglected realities in his surroundings with a basic camera which he got as a present from his brother. His films feature various characters from a self-taught skater to a man who fosters pigeons in the heart of Lahore. “When working on a new character, I always go in with an open mind, to get a full image of a story.”

Nafees graduated from the prestigious National College of Arts in Lahore and belongs to the younger generation of filmmakers in Pakistan. He likes making noncommercial documentary films as they are “raw, independent, and impactful” and go far “beyond storytelling, and can be a strong medium to provoke thoughts and actions in societies.”

With its rich history and diverse cultural landscape, Pakistan has an abundance of stories. As a young filmmaker in Pakistan, Nafees believes the video contest by DW and Dawn media has had an impact on young talents in Pakistan, he tells Weltzeit, adding that it “did a great job in encouraging the production of great films.” The film market in Pakistan is small but, according to Nafees, things are getting better since online streaming services have become easily available. This has resulted in people developing a greater interest in and an eye for good films.

Omer Nafees (left) during a ©shoot in Lahore, Pakistan.

© DW / A. Saleem

Nafees was very surprised by the appreciative and supportive response from the audience during the video contest: “I loved the fact that people could really connect with the aspects of my characters and their stories.” He welcomes the opportunity that the project has provided young filmmakers “to share the stories they wanted to tell,” says Nafees about the film competition #ItHappensOnlyInPakistan.

A deep dive into Pakistani life and culture

The documentary contest #ItHappensOnlyInPakistan, hosted by DW and Dawn Media, puts young filmmakers into the limelight.

by John Marshall, DW journalistic trainee

Saad Bhatti and Adeel Qureshi’s film ‘Nidar (Fearless)’ won the second prize in the competition.

© DW / DAWN

‘Staying Still’ by Waleed Akram, Ibrahim Hassan and Sheikh Mubashir received the third prize.

© DW / DAWN

Launched in 2018, #ItHappensOnlyInPakistan is a nationwide video story contest that invites filmmakers to submit short documentary films on subjects that are uniquely Pakistani. The media houses Dawn and DW developed a collaboration to promote talented filmmakers from across Pakistan.

The competition focuses on film and creates a much-needed space for local documentary filmmakers to showcase their talent and work, as well as to highlight unique stories about Pakistan. At the start of the collaboration, there was skepticism on how the standard Dawn audience would react to stories that didn’t address hard news or fall within the boilerplate current affairs style of storytelling. However, the films have been well received. Last year’s contest was the most successful yet with over five million views.

What makes the film competition so appealing to the audience is how authentically each subject is tackled in the film. In addition to the topics, one can see how much local talents have to offer. The project did very well among the film-making community, with over 2,000 entries coming in from all over the country in the contest’s first edition in 2018.

The projects that Dawn and DW have collaborated on, such as the #OurDiverse- Pakistan project, have all gained traction and encouraged young, previously littleknown filmmakers to come forward and share their work on a broader platform, making these avenues critical to the exposure that Pakistani filmmakers and stories from Pakistan ought to get. It is via this exposure that filmmakers can overcome some of the critical challenges they would otherwise face in finding their feet in the media and establishing their name, which is almost always a prerequisite to advancing their work and their careers and most importantly in securing credible sponsors so they may produce important and meaningful work.

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Dawn Media Group

is Pakistan’s largest and most highly regarded media house covering an array of aspects when it comes to Pakistani public life. Dawn’s audience consists of several segments from within the Pakistani public and diaspora as well as foreign readers from the United States, India and Afghanistan, who are interested in news from Pakistan and South Asia. The Dawn Media Group is committed to reliable and constructive information on various platforms such as newspaper, website, as well as the TV channel. All these platforms carry information and content that affects the Pakistani public on local as well as national levels.

Be it news and discussions on high school exams during coronavirus or the impact of climate change on crop yields or discussions that bring into light subjects such as resuming trade ties with India, Dawn covers matters that impact all ages and milieus of Pakistan’s national make-up; whether with an English newspaper, news websites in English and Urdu, an English-language radio station, an Urdu news channel as well as several other publications to boot.

When coronavirus hit home, Dawn’s audience became heavily invested in news and stories on how the virus was impacting the world. They wanted information on how best to manage if they were infected with the virus and sought information on testing, hospitals etc. They wanted to know how their own neighborhoods were being impacted on a day-to-day basis. They sought knowledge on the progress when it comes to vaccine development. Although there were also periods of pandemic fatigue where readers consumed other information, the interest in news and updates on the pandemic persists and there is continued interest in staying informed on that front.

Keep Scrolling

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DW partner Scroll.in is an independent news, information, and entertainment venture launched in 2014. Scroll aims to shed light on the most important political and cultural stories that are shaping contemporary India by adding critical perspectives to these stories through rigorous reporting, objective analyses, and expert commentary. Its team consists of young as well as seasoned journalists who have produced awardwinning journalism in the last eight years.

There is huge public interest for ground reports on innovation in India. Yet few get told. Through its partnership with DW, Scroll can showcase success stories on topics ranging from health to job opportunities to environment and climate change to world events from India to an international audience.

Locally, Scroll’s audience primarily consists of decision makers, residents of India’s large metropoles largely between 22 and 44 years, with an almost equal male to female ratio. Scroll distributes its content in English and Hindi on multiple platforms. On television, DW’s environmental format Eco India is one of the highlights. Social media is also a key distribution medium for the broadcaster — especially with about 30 percent of its audience engaging on these platforms. In this way, Scroll ensures that its content reaches and addresses the needs for all user groups.

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DW Tamil

will be added to the broadcast languages in 2021. The new journalistic offering in Tamil is aimed at the world’s approximately 75 million speakers. Most of them live in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In addition, there are about six million native Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka, where they make up about a quarter of the island nation’s population. Reporting in Tamil will focus on human rights, civil society issues and the simmering conflicts.