Pakistan’s first animated feature film to release online

KARACHI: Pakistan’s first animated feature film, Shehr-e-Tabassum (City of Smiles ), will release online in Pakistan and the United Kingdom by the end of February 2020.

According to film director Arafat Mazhar, the film which is inspired by Blade Runner, Akira and George Orwell’s 1984, is set in Pakistan in the year 2071, the State or Government is the main character.

In the trailer, the storyteller keeps telling people they need to keep smiling. “On the surface, it may be about totalitarianism and the rights we give up for peace and security,” Mazhar said.

Mazhar was recently in the UK for pre-release screenings, mostly for students, and also showed it at the Lahore Music Meet over the weekend. Mazhar said he has been experimenting with different forms of messaging through engaging audio-visual content.

This film was an extension of a previous project in which he animated legal literacy, governance and citizenship topics.  Spinoff topics in Shehr-e-Tabassumare freedom of expression, privacy, surveillance in the digital age.