Film festival 2020: Pakistani film maker bags two awards

NEW YORK: In International Film Festival 2020, Pakistani film maker Shehzad Hameed Ahmed won two awards for his acclaimed documentaries in the category of human rights and human concerns at New York.

In the first category for ‘human concerns’, Ahmed’s documentary ‘Whiter shades of terror’ which is based on white supremacist terrorism in the Christchurch shootings last year, won the Silver Award.

 While in the second category of ‘human rights’, his film titled ‘Caught in the cross fire’ bagged the bronze award.

The film ‘Caught in the cross fire’, part of Ahmed’s two-part documentary, orbits around the plight of people living in the war-torn country Afghanistan.

In ‘Whiter Shads  of terror’ the story revolve around the lives of three civilians: a journalist, a female street artist and a young army cadet. The film portrays their never-ending struggles during the war between Afghanistan and Taliban.

For the second part of the film titled ‘The battle for Kabul’, Ahmed got rare access into Taliban badlands, to understand why the Taliban have such a hold over the region despite 18 years having passed since America’s incursion of the country.

The 34-year-old student of journalism and documentary film at New York University has also won several international awards, including the 2014 International Cooperation Award from the King of Spain.

Earlier, Shehzad also won a gold medal at the New York Festival in 2016 for his documentary ‘Flight of the Falcons’, a Silver World Medal for Kasur’s Lost Children in 2017, a Silver World Medal for ‘Rise and Fall of Mujib’ in 2019, along with a Bronze for Nepal’s Child Brides.