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.
So You Think You Can Pitch is back! Celebrate our 15th year of pitch competitions by supporting your favourite emerging filmmakers in our live event! Featuring a total of five finalist individuals or teams, the winner will walk away with our amazing prize package to kickstart or finish their short film, including a cash award, in-kind support, and the opportunity to premiere their work with us at next year’s festival!
In this artist talk, Golboo Amani introduces us to her body of work, which often addresses and challenges the formal conditions of knowledge production and invites us to consider the power of alternate sites of pedagogy in creating collective agency and community building.
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.
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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