The Case of Saba Qaiser and The Film-Maker Determined To Put An End To 'Honour' Killings - Documentary Films - The Guardian

12/17/2020 The case of Saba Qaiser and the film-maker determined to put an end to 'honour' killings | Documentary films
umentary films | The Guardian
The Observer
Interview
The case of Saba Qaiser and the film maker
determined to put an end to 'honour' killings
Alex Clark
Sun 14 Feb 2016 12.05 GMT
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy is a documentary film-maker whose 2012 film about acid
violence, Saving Face, made her the first Pakistani to win an Academy Award. This
year, she is nominated again for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which tells
the story of 19-year-old Saba Qaiser, from the Pakistani province of Punjab, whose
father and uncle shot her in the face and threw her in a river because she had married
without her family’s consent. Because she had tilted her head at the last minute, Saba
survived the shooting and managed to get to a petrol station for help. But although her
father and uncle were subsequently arrested, Saba came under pressure to forgive
them, which under Pakistani law means they would escape further punishment.
How did you come across Saba’s case?

I wanted to tell a story about “honour” killings, from the perspective of somebody who
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12/17/2020 The case of Saba Qaiser and the film-maker determined to put an end to 'honour' killings | Documentary films | The Guardian
had survived, because almost always victims of “honour” crime die, and it’s very hard
then to tell the story, because you never have the perspective of that person and what
they went through. So I was searching for a survivor, and one day I read in the
newspaper that a girl had been shot and put in a gunny bag and thrown in a river, and
survived, and was in a hospital. So I went off to try and find that hospital.
Saba had this And obviously you did…

defiant will about Yes, I found her in hospital – it must have been about two
her, even on day one. days after she had been shot. We got permission from the
And she just took to hospital, and we spent a lot of time speaking to her; you
filming, as if she was know, she was very open to telling her story because she
born for the camera believed very strongly that she didn’t want anyone else to
go through what she had.
She must have been in a great deal of pain, and shock?

She was. She had this extraordinary kind of will though – this defiant will about her,
even on day one. And she just took to filming matter-of-factly, as if she was born for
the camera. But she never did anything extra for the camera, she was who she was;
and you see that as the film progresses, you see her demeanour, the way she reacts, the
way she laughs – it’s all very natural.
Saba Qaiser in hospital in June, 2014 after having been shot by the father. The bullet missed her brain because she tilted her
head at the last minute. Photograph: Yaqoob Shahzad/Reuters
She was also facing the immensely painful reality of her own family having tried to
kill her, and now ostracising her. How common is that situation?
It is a pretty common narrative, because about a thousand women are killed in
“honour” crimes in Pakistan every year; and we think the number is much higher
because many cases go unreported. The problem with “honour” killing is that it’s
considered in the domain of the home. People hush it up: a father kills a daughter, and
nobody ever responds, nobody ever files a case. The victim remains nameless and
faceless, and we never hear about them. People feel, “if we register a case, it will bring
shame to the family”. So this [film] is a way for us to bring it out in the open, to have a
national discourse about it, for us to say this is a crime, it has nothing to do with
honour; it’s premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
What has the reaction in Pakistan been like?

One of the most encouraging things was that the prime minister made a statement
after the [Academy Award] nomination. He said that he would look into this matter
and he would work on “honour” killings and he wanted to hold the first screening at
his residence. Now, that is a very brave statement to make, it’s also a very forward-
thinking statement. And we are now waiting to hear back from the government about a
date to hold the first screening; we are hopeful that he will follow through on his
statement.
And your view is that a change in law is the fundamental aim?

The thing about “honour” crimes is that there are people who don’t think that it is a
crime because people don’t go to jail for it. If you have entire towns and villages where
people know of people who have killed their daughters or their wives or their sisters
and never been to jail, you will think it is not a crime. As long as people don’t think it’s
a crime, they will continue to kill women. The minute people start going to jail, it will
act as a deterrent. People will know that there are serious repercussions and that it is a
heinous crime. We have to take that first step of sending people to jail.
Pakistan is One of the most disturbing aspects of A Girl in the River is

changing rapidly. the way Saba’s father believes that his actions have served
How long will people as a warning to his other daughters, and that his standing
be able to hold in the community will improve.
women back? I see As you see at the end of the film, he feels more empowered,
cracks in traditional that he has done something right, and that people in the
society community grant him more respect, and he says that his
other daughters are getting very good proposals [of
marriage.] This is exactly what happens: this grandstanding
that takes place, people become huge in their community, they aren’t looked on as
criminals. So of course if he had gone to jail, the narrative would have been very
different.
It’s also extraordinary to see how the female members of Saba’s family backed her
father up.
Well, you know, they’ve been brainwashed to believe that this is something that would
elicit this kind of response. His sister was the most shocking for me: she said, well,
what she did expect? She ran away. She got married out of her choice. This was bound
to happen.
Your work puts Pakistani society under the microscope – but how much do you think
it is changing?
Pakistan is changing rapidly. Sixty per cent of the population is under the age of 25, you
have a high use of cellphones, of the internet. How long will people be able to hold
women back? More women are going to college and schools, and I see cracks in
traditional society. More and more women know their rights because of how
interconnected they are; they’re no longer isolated. Even in the remotest of villages
you have cellphones now, and of course this is going to shake the status quo in a
patriarchal society… Women now want a greater say, they want greater economic
independence, they want a greater say in the kind of marriages they make, the kind of
education they get, where they work. You find this more often more in second-tier
cities and in major cities, but the time is not far off when it’s going to seep down to
other places as well.Even if a woman is not educated, she is learning on the cellphone
how to send messages; the cellphone is transforming Pakistan.
How much do you see your role as enabling and pushing for change as well as simply
documenting what you see around you?
I like to talk about the things that people don’t like to talk about. I like to have the
difficult conversations. I want people to feel uncomfortable about issues. While society
is changing rapidly, there are all of these issues that we’re not addressing. We think
that by hiding them, they will go away. My documentation is not only of the issues, but
also of the people who are fighting them, the heroes you don’t know, the nameless
people who are risking their lives every day.
Protesters in Islamabad, 2014. Around 1,000 ‘honour’ killings are reported in Pakistan every year. Photograph: Faisal
Mahmood/Reuters
Have you encountered resistance?

The biggest criticism that I get is: “Why are you showcasing stories that make Pakistan
look bad?” And my response to that is: “Why are you shooting the messenger? Why
don’t you fix the problem?”
How many film-makers in Pakistan are making films about acid violence, about
“honour” killings, about child marriage, about rape? Very few. I live in Pakistan, I want
it to become a better country than it is, and I think that by having these discussions, by
bringing these films out, we as a country are forced to acknowledge them.
Did you always know you wanted to tell these stories through film?
I was actually a print journalist – I started writing for newspapers when I was 14 years
old. And I was writing in newspapers all through my teenage years, and then when I
went off to college in America, I was writing for newspapers over there. Then 9/11
happened, and I wanted to move from print, which I thought was limiting me, because
it was one-dimensional, to something that was visual. I didn’t even know what a
documentary film was – I was 21 years old, I’d barely ever seen one. Don’t forget I grew
up in Pakistan when there was only one television channel, and when I went to
America, mostly I watched popular culture, I didn’t watch documentaries. But then I
did a lot of research – did I want to go into news, or did I want to go into something that
was long form? And that’s when I stumbled upon documentaries. I’m a self-start
person… everything I know I’ve learnt off the internet.
Being a woman You’ve made many films, in many different places and
has been an asset for circumstances – about Pakistan’s transgender community,
me. I don’t think about Bangladeshi female peacekeepers deployed to Haiti,
I’d be able to tell the about child terrorists. How much has being a female film-
kind of stories that maker affected issues such as access, or how people react
I do if I was a man to you?
I think that I’ve been fortunate to be a female film-maker. It
allows me greater access, greater sensitivity in some cases
to some of the subjects. I can go into places that men cannot as easily. Being a woman
has really been an asset for me, and I don’t think I’d be able to tell the kind of stories
that I do if I was a man.
This Academy Award nomination comes in a year when diversity is a huge issue, with
some actors and directors planning to boycott the awards. What’s your feeling about
that?
I think that the Academy is a reflection of Hollywood. I think that you cannot blame
the academy, you have to begin making changes in Hollywood first, and see how many
films come out with diverse characters in them, with diverse scripts. It’s only when
you bring diversity into Hollywood that you can bring diversity into the Academy
Awards. Having said that, if you look very closely this year, there are a number of film-
makers from around the world, outside of the foreign-language categories.
As a documentary film-maker, when I’m looking at diversity, I’m not looking at the
actors and actresses, I’m looking at my field – and in my field, there is diversity this
year. In my category, there’s a film from Pakistan, a film about the Holocaust, a film
about Vietnam, one about Ebola and Africa – the diversity’s immense, just in the
subjects that are being tackled.
What’s happening in the documentary world? There are great practitioners, but is it
sometimes a struggle to get films made?
Yes. But the good thing about documentary films is that you have some major players
coming in. Netflix,Amazon, these will all change the way documentary film-makers tell
their stories – the experimentation is enormous. In some cases, the genre is taking
many more risks than it did before.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Pakistan’s untold stories
Watch a talk by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy on Pakistan’s untold stories.
How do you feel about your prospects on 28 February?

This is a very competitive year – there are some fantastic films out there, and some
fantastic film-makers. You never know until that envelope is opened who’s going to be
announced. So I am putting all my energy into getting the Pakistani government and
the Pakistani prime minister to make good on his promise. To me, it will be a bigger
win if we do manage to at least begin to send people to jail for “honour” killings. That’ll
be a much bigger win.
And what news do you have of Saba?

Since the filming stopped, she’s had a son [with the man she chose to be with], and
she’s basically hoping to educate him. A donor has come forward to give land to her, so
she has land in her own name. She didn’t even have a birth certificate or an ID card, all
of that has been processed. She finally has an identity of her own.
The 88th Academy Awards ceremony is on 28 February. A Girl in the River: The Price of
Forgiveness is nominated in the documentary (short subject) category. Sharmeen Obaid-
Chinoy hopes the film will be shown later this year in communities across the UK where
“honour” crimes have occurred
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12/17/2020 The case of Saba Qaiser and the film-maker determined to put an end to 'honour' killings | Documentary films

umentary films | The Guardian

Sun 14 Feb 2016 12.05 GMT

How did you come across Saba’s case?

Saba had this And obviously you did…

She must have been in a great deal of pain, and shock?

What has the reaction in Pakistan been like?

And your view is that a change in law is the fundamental aim?

Pakistan is One of the most disturbing aspects of A Girl in the River is

Have you encountered resistance?

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Pakistan’s untold stories

Watch a talk by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy on Pakistan’s untold stories.

How do you feel about your prospects on 28 February?

And what news do you have of Saba?

News is under threat …

Support The Guardian Remind me in January

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