SHEHREZAD
MAHER

Duration: 60:03
Year of production: 2018
Countries of production: Pakistan, United States
Music: Todd Reynolds
Sound Mix: Andor Sperling

Synopsis
A prompt to two ambulance drivers in Karachi to reconstruct recurring dreams catalyzes an exploration of the permeable boundaries between memory and fiction, and between trauma and its recollection. As first responders consider the aftermath of violent events, television re-enactment actors audition for and perform the gendered roles of victim, perpetrator, and witness in scenarios ranging from the banal to tragic. Unfolding through rituals, preparations, dreams, and performance, we never see the events themselves but catch traces of the extent to which they have been internalized by a society.

Streaming platforms
Kinoscope
GuideDoc

Screenings
Visions du Réel, Nyon, Switzerland, 2018
RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal), Canada, 2018
Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2018
Signes de Nuit, Paris, France, 2018
UnionDocs, Brooklyn, NY, 2019
London Indian Film Festival, London, England, 2019
Athens International Film and Video Festival, Athens, OH, 2019
Singapore South Asian International Film Festival, Singapore, 2019
Chalta Phirta Documentary Festival, Pakistan, 2020
“Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance,” Mantiq of the Mantis, Pakistan, 2020
Pame Film and Music Festival, Pokhara, Nepal, 2020
“South Asia Foreground,” Labocine, June Edition (#59), 2021
Pakistan Women International Film Festival, Islamabad, Pakistan, 2021

Press
Dawn (Images)
BBC Radio London, Interview with Attika Choudhary (June 23, 2019)
British Medical Journal
Scroll.in
Sight & Sound
High on Films
Movie Mahal
Point of View magazine (POV)
The GATE
Asian Movie Pulse (Review and list of "11 Best Asian documentaries of 2018")