For those gray, dreary Berlin February days, the Berlinale this year is offering a colorful fever dream of a cinematic antidote courtesy of Pakistan. After all, writer-director Sarmad Sultan Khoosat, known for Circus of Life and Joyland, both of which were Pakistan’s official Oscar submissions, with the latter winning the jury prize at Cannes, is bringing his new movie, Lali, to the German capital.
The story about a woman, who is considered a cursed bride, and her husband, who pretends to be possessed in an attempt to control her, is the first all-Pakistani feature at the Berlin International Film Festival, which has in the past featured Pakistani co-productions. And the fact that the fest will roll out the red carpet for Lali‘s world premiere in Berlin’s Panorama section on Saturday, Feb. 14, is only fitting, given that red plays a key role in the movie.
Mamya Shajaffar, Channan Hanif, Rasti Farooq, Farazeh Syed, and Mehr Bano star in the exploration of marriage, repression, and trauma, focused on a couple whose relationship covers a whole range of emotions, from fear, shame and tenderness to desire, violence and superstition.
Shajaffar plays Zeba, who is newly married to man-child Sajawal (Hanif) after having three suitors who ended up dying. She seeks refuge in two women, her feisty mother-in-law and a quiet, wise neighbor. Meanwhile, Sajawal is haunted by paranoia.
Produced by Khoosat Films in collaboration with Enso Films, Lali promises to “release the suppressed forces that continue to suffocate many unions.” Featuring cinematography by Khizer Idrees (Manto, Circus of Life), the movie was edited by Joyland editor Saim Sadiq.
Khoosat, who also made the feature Kamli, talked to THR about his interests, what inspired Lali, and where the film’s musical groove comes from.
The story and inspiration for the film came to the director from an unexpected place, an actress he had worked with in the past. “It was a short story written by an old ‘aunt’ who happened to be an actor on my first-ever TV project,” he tells THR. “I worked with her, and I grew really, really fond of her. She played my mom on this sitcom series that I wrote. And then one day she just told me that she writes short stories. And she told me the very psychological stories they talk about. I’m a huge fan of Jung and Freud, and she said these are really stories about human needs and basic libido and the like. And I was like, ‘Okay, bring it on’.”
When he got a copy of the stories and read one with a title that translates as “Black Blanket,” he noticed a cinematic quality to her stories. “They were really sensory and talked about sensations like touching, smelling, tasting things. There was so much sensory stuff, which was also sensuous, talking about desire. And she had a very accurate and very personal eye on Punjabi culture. So I read this story, and it stayed with me.” Khoosat ended up buying the rights to her short story collection. “It became the seed for Lali,” he concludes.
The color shifted for the movie, though, as the color red is a key theme of Lali, which also explains the film’s title. “It’s not a black blanket in the film, it’s a red blanket,” Khoosat notes. “Lal means red, and if somebody’s blushing, you’ll say that they have lali on their cheeks. But there are two versions of it, one uses a different alphabet. So if you change that, Lali also means sun.”
In the film, the male protagonist also has a red birthmark on his face, “and children in the neighborhood would tease the boy and call him Lali.” All in all, after first considering a different title, “I let Lali be the Rosebud,” the filmmaker concludes.
It also makes sense that red is all over the movie for another reason. “The film is based around weddings, and, for marriage and the festivities around a wedding in Pakistani or other subcontinental households, red is the color,” explains Khoosat. “I’ve never used red in my films before, because I’m very scared of the color red. My cinematographer would tell me, and my colorist would tell me that red bleeds so badly. Red is tough to color correct. Red is tough to handle. And so I’d never been fond of red.”The themes explored in Lali include social constructs and relationships, including marriage. “I am fascinated by the idea of how marriages are constructed into the social fabric,” he says. “My parents married multiple times. So, I saw how marriage is really like the antidote and the solution to so many things.”
How did the director approach casting? “What happens in Pakistan is that our TV is huge in terms of the amount of productions that are made every year, and so most of the actors do come from either television or theater,” he tells THR. “Mamya is the only one who has done a little bit of TV, and she has done a bit of theater also. But very oddly, what really stayed with me was a little fashion film she had done for a boutique, a designer. There was something about this video in which she’s just dancing with abandon, just carefree, completely in control of her body, but not aware of her own body and what she was doing with it.”
Khoosat continues: “Her audition was just stunning. There’s something about her. The first thing I noticed is that she’s not using the standard TV toolkit. She doesn’t have those pre-decided pauses and stresses and that fake articulation. The alchemy of casting is such a mystery.”
For her co-lead Hanif, “this is pretty much his cinema debut,” the director tells THR. “Something about this boy, the way he behaves, and the way he looks, very much convinced me.”
Music by Punjabi hip-hop artist Star Shah adds additional groove to Lali. “We have this thing here in Pakistan sponsored by Coca-Cola. It’s called Coke Studio, a platform where a lot of young singers are brought forward, and they are given an opportunity to collaborate with other people,” Khoosat explains. “Star Shah did a song on there, and again, something about him and the way he spoke Punjabi, the way he sang connected with me. It’s very musical, meaning melodious, rap. He auditioned for a friend’s part first, and I felt this guy was really good. So I asked him to write his own song.”
In the end, the director asked the musician to compose music to texts from his favorite poet, Shiv Batalvi. “So, all of them are original compositions, except for the wedding song that’s this famous, almost folklorish, wedding song,” and another tune,” he tells THR.
Lali feels like it could travel around the globe, but its creator isn’t getting ahead of himself. “I do believe that cinema should have the potential to transcend language and cultures,” says Khoosat. “But I’m a huge believer that wherever it originates from, it must serve its primary purpose.”
