Producer Meher Jaffri is bringing Pakistani cinema back to life.

 

Everyone told her filmmaking wasn’t a viable career, but Meher Jaffri didn’t let that stop her. In 2010, the 28-year-old Pakistani-Canadian — who never went to film school — started her own film production company in Karachi called Bodhicitta Works, and in August this year, she released her first feature-length Urdu film called Seedlings (Lamha), starring well-known Pakistani actors Aamina Sheikh and Mohib Mirza.
Seedlings, a human interest drama about a young couple that experiences the loss of their only child, premiered at the New York City International Film Festival and won awards for best feature film (an audience choice award) and best actress.

Jaffri believes that Pakistanis at home and abroad are starving for creative, independent Pakistani films, and their support is an indication of that. “We got rave reviews at NYCIFF. There were people who drove from hours away to see an hour-and-a-half film, which shows how patriotic they are,” she says. “We were overwhelmed. There were tears in my eyes.”

Jaffri — who grew up mostly in Pakistan and has also lived in Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Canada — says she’s been interested in film since she was a teenager. She participated in high school plays in Pakistan and in Singapore, and continued to feed her passion for film by watching and directing plays, taking scriptwriting classes, completing animation courses and attending film workshops while pursuing her business management degree at McGill University in Montreal.

At the time, it was something she did on the side. “I had no belief that I was going to engage in a career in film because I’d already been told that it’s not so easy,” Jaffri says. “When I thought about going to film school after McGill, I was disheartened by everyone telling me I would be broke.”

Consequently, she took on a business development role in Toronto and then a communications position in Karachi after moving back in 2008. Her career path changed when she met Summer Nicks, an Australian scriptwriter in Karachi. They bonded over their mutual love of film and started discussing scripts and movie ideas. Jaffri loved Nicks’s idea for a sci-fi thriller that would follow the lives of three characters as they deal with an apocalyptic event in Karachi.

In 2010, they quit their jobs, and Bodhicitta Works was born (Bodhicitta is a Buddhist term that means “to generate compassion and kindness”). In February 2011, the company released a trailer for their film Kolachi on YouTube and it went viral. It garnered the young company national and international media attention, and led to a partnership with an Australian production company.

Kolachi’s production was delayed until more funding and distribution could be secured, but in the meantime, Bodhicitta Works produced Seedlings, a smaller budget film.

Jaffri ended up using most of her personal savings to make the film. “The biggest challenge in Pakistan is finding financing because people here don’t look at film as an investment vehicle,” she says. “The film and distribution industry is not really developed here.”

Although it’s been a struggle to get Pakistani cinemas to show her film, she hopes to release Seedlings in Pakistani theatres in January 2013. Internationally, the film is being screened at the Canada South Asian Film Festival, as well as at film festivals in Delhi, Kolkata and London, England in the coming months.

Jaffri’s success has given hope to artistic youth in Pakistan. “When people come to us and say we’re revolutionizing and reviving the cinema industry in their eyes, and now they think it’s possible to get into it, that’s great,” she says. “We want more filmmakers in Pakistan.”