Available to Ontario audience only
Canada, Pakistan202189 minUrdu, English with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereDocumentary, Reel Asian Award Winner, Women Filmmakers
In the electrifying lead-up to the multi-city Aurat March (Women’s March) in Pakistan, director Anam Abbas follows grassroots organizers as they navigate a deeply surveilled and violent environment to assert a growing, nation-wide feminist movement. Negotiating freedoms with fearful relatives and dodging constant scrutiny, activists move with unbreakable commitment to galvanizing their communities with a radical feminist agenda.
Using observational footage of heated organizing conversations and extensive coverage of the movement and its backlash across 11 cities, Abbas constructs a layered narrative, astutely tracing state suppression of women’s resistance in Pakistan to the damage caused by its colonial past. This Stained Dawn (Dagh Dagh Ujala), which borrows its title from a verse by revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz about the tainted dawn after a violent partition, is a powerful record of a turning point in Pakistan’s history, as one of the most urgent displays of large-scale feminist organizing gains remarkable momentum and promise.
- Mariam Zaidi
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Sheffield DocFest
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival
Anam Abbas
Anam Abbas is a Pakistani Canadian film producer, director and cinematographer. She is a 2018 Berlinale Talent, 2020 Berlinale Talents Project Market, 2019 Film Independent Global Media Maker, and 2020 Cannes Producers Network Fellow. Abbas is also one of the founding members of the Documentary Association of Pakistan.
Q&A moderated by Farrah Khan
Farrah Safia Khan has spent two decades raising awareness about the intersections of gender-based violence and equity through education, policy, and advocacy. She is the founder of Possibility Seeds, a member of the Government of Canada’s Advisory Council on the Strategy to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence and the Manager of Consent Comes First at Ryerson University.
Available to Ontario audience only
10 Nov, 2021
to 19 Nov, 2021
PG
Community Partner
This presentation has closed captions.
An Active Listener will be available to offer one-on-one peer support for viewers who may find the content of this presentation triggering. More info on how to access here.
Our Opening Night presentation is the in-person screening of ISLANDS on November 10 at 7:30pm at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. Guests in attendance include director Martin Edralin, and cast members Sheila Lotuaco and Esteban Comilang.
Ali Kazimi is Reel Asian’s Canadian Artist Spotlight in 2021. Appropriately for our 25th festival, the documentary filmmaker, media artist, activist, author, and educator has been a fixture in the Asian Canadian community, and we celebrate his over three decades of vital contributions to Canadian media.
Spanning over a decade from 1984 to 1996, Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas is a portrait of Jeffrey Thomas, a self-described “Urban Iroquois” photographer, exploring the influences on his life that led him to his career.
Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian and Asian diasporic artists and storytellers. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
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