Under Chhavi series of classical movies, an Urdu film — Ramchand Pakistani — was screened at Abhirang Auditorium, Bharat Bhavan, here on Sunday . Ramchand Pakistani is an Urdu-language Pakistani drama film directed by Mehreen Jabbar and produced by Javed Jabbar. The film features Nandita Das, Rashid Farooqi, Syed Fazel Hussain, Maria Wasti and Noman Ijaz in lead roles. The film is based on a true story of a boy who inadvertently crosses the border between Pakistan and India and the following ordeal that his family has to go through.
Champa (Nandita Das) is a Hindu woman who is left desolate when her young son and husband disappear one day from their village at the Pakistan-India border near Nagarparkar, in Tharparkar. The film depicts the crossing of the Pakistan-India border, during a period of war-like tension between the two countries, by two members of a Pakistani Hindu family belonging to the ‘untouchable’ Dalit caste, and the extraordinary consequences of this unintended action upon the lives of a woman, a man, and their son.
The singular theme of the film is how a child from Pakistan aged eight years learns to cope with the trauma of forced separation from his mother while being held prisoner, along with his father in the jail of a country (India), which is hostile to Pakistan. Meanwhile, the wife-mother, devastated by their sudden disappearance builds a new chapter of her life, by her solitary struggle for sheer survival.
The film screening here on Sunday evoked a satisfactory response and the adherent movie lovers only were observed at the screening.