In her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards on February 28, filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy said her documentary “is what happens when determined women get together.” Obaid-Chinoy had won the Oscar in the Documentary (short) category for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which is about the taboo subject of honour killings in Pakistan.
The documentary traces the journey of an 18-year-old girl woman who survives being shot by her relatives and dumped in a river after a forbidden romance. Obaid-Chinoy’s win is her second. In 2012, her short film Saving Face, about acid attack victims, also won an Oscar in the same category. Honour killings have been on the rise in Pakistan and, as Obaid-Chinoy said in a recent interview, the names of victims are often unknown and the bodies are never found. The filmmaker has screened A Girl in the River to Pakistan to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and extracted a commitment from him to bring in legislation to end the practice.
The Oscar win has given many Pakistanis a reason to cheer Obaid-Chonoy’s work, but her detractors claim that her several documentaries focus on the problems of Pakistan rather than highlighting its positive aspects. Shortly after her Oscar speech, the hashtag #WeDisownSharmeen started trending on social media. There was some whataboutary as well, with critics asking why Obaid-Chinoy should get an international award while charity worker Abdul Sattar Edhi hasn’t (never mind that the two do very different kinds of work).
There was some love, but also a lot of vitriol on Twitter for the filmmaker, who was born in Pakistan but holds dual citizenship with Canada.
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