“A Walnut Tree” from Pakistan bags top award at Film Southasia 2015


“A Walnut Tree” from Pakistan bags top award at Film Southasia 2015
Still from 'A Walnut Tree'

Displacement and nostalgia for the homeland are very personal themes for young filmmaker Ammar Aziz who “grew up hearing about the green fields and mango orchards of Hoshiarpur”

By Beena Sarwar

By Beena Sarwar

Young Pakistani filmmaker Ammar Aziz won the top award at this year’s Film Southasia 2015, the region’s premier festival for documentaries held biennially in Kathmandu.

Aziz’s film, “A Walnut Tree” (92 min, 2015) is a moving saga from Pakistan of an old man’s longing for home and hearth after being displaced by military operations in North Waziristan. Acclaimed Indian film director, scriptwriter, and producer Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Chief Guest at the event, presented the Ram Bahadur Trophy for the best film and cash award to Aziz.

The runner up was Khoon Diy Baarav (Blood Leaves its trail) a film from India by Iffat Fatima that deals with enforced disappearances in Kashmir. The UNICEF award for the film most sensitive to the needs of children went to “Drawing the Tiger” from Nepal by Ramyata Limbu and Amy Benson. The Tareq Masud Award for the best debut film was presented to “On and Off the Records” by Pratik Biswas from India . The best student film, a category introduced only this year, went to “Tyres” from Myanmar directed by Kyaw Myo Lwin.

“The Festival, held on schedule despite the devastating April earthquake and the ongoing blockade on the Nepal border that has led to a severe fuel and other shortages in the country, drew large crowds who biked, walked or took public transport to the venue to watch non-fiction films,” said festival director, journalist and editor Mitu Varma in statement emailed to the media. “Nepal, as the cultural hub of Southasia, seems wonderfully alive and ticking despite all odds!”

Film poster

Film poster

A graduate of the National College of Arts, Lahore, Ammar Aziz is an independent documentary filmmaker and left-wing activist. He is featured in the Christian Science Monitor’s ’30 under 30′ people from around the world. He has worked widely on labour-issues and his films have been shown at various international film and human rights events in Europe and Asia. He is the founding director of a recently formed non-government, non-profit organization called Samaaj (Social Awareness Media and Art Junction) that aims to use media for creating rights awareness among marginalized communities in conflict areas in Pakistan.

“A Walnut Tree” is one of four documentaries made under the Justice Project initiated by Indian documentary filmmaker Rahul Roy under his registered trust Aakar. Roy set up Aakar in 1992 to conduct research, produce documentaries and other cultural materials to impact public and policy discourse on various themes including gender, violence, communalism, health, livelihood and culture in the region.

Aakar’s series of regional projects include documentaries, research, trainings, and seminars to explore masculinities, prevention of violence against women and related issues. Previous projects include the documentary series Let’s Talk Men 1.0 and 2.0 in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India on the theme of masculinities. Similarly, the Justice Project aims to produce research papers and films in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India highlighting pressing concerns on justice in the respective countries.

Documentary filmmaker Ammar Aziz with writer Arundhati Roy in Delhi after the premier of his film there earlier this year. Photo: courtesy Ammar Aziz.

Documentary filmmaker Ammar Aziz with writer Arundhati Roy in Delhi after the premier of his film there earlier this year. Photo: courtesy Ammar Aziz.

A Walnut Tree has been screened in three South Asian cities already, Delhi, Colombo and Kathmandu. It is currently in the competition section at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, November 18-29.

Aziz has previously directed short films on female bangle makers in Hyderabad, Sindh, and power loom workers in Faisalabad (formerly Lyallpur). He is now working on a documentary on internally displaced Hindus from Waziristan, who were initially Dalits that the British settled in Waziristan to do cleaning jobs. “Despite living there for over a century they are still seen as the ‘other’,” says Aziz. “Since the military operation Zarb-e-Azab, they are living in Bannu.”

In a recent interview, Aziz said that displacement and nostalgia for the homeland “have always been very personal themes to me. We grew up hearing about the green fields and mango orchards of Hoshiarpur from where my grandmother migrated to Lahore during the partition.”

The main character, Baba, in ‘A Walnut Tree’, says Aziz, “becomes a metaphor of a cultured past which has been demolished because of proxy wars.”

— Beena Sarwar




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