For Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the two-time Oscar-winning Pakistani director, anger is almost a motivating factor. She draws from it deeply to tell her stories. “Anger is necessary for people to go beyond not liking what they see,” she once said. “I need enough people who watch my stuff to be moved, and to be angry, and to do something about it.” Both her Oscar-winning documentary shorts—Saving Face (2012), about Pakistani acid attack victims, and A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (2016), about honour killings—have this harsh, uncompromising quality about them. They disturb, jar and shake you out of your equilibrium.
Sitara: Let Girls Dream, Obaid-Chinoy’s latest animated short, is different. Set in 1970s Pakistan, it tells the story of Pari, a 14-year-old girl who wants to become a pilot, but is forced to marry an older man. The silent film has a dreamy, whimsical quality about it, a fitting backdrop to the hopes and unfulfilled longings of Pari. The scenes are soaked in vivid colours and complemented by a beautiful musical score by Laura Karpman. Pari’s dreams are symbolised by the motif of the paper plane that she and her younger sister fly from their terrace, which soars high before landing at the feet of their tyrannical father. The things left unsaid in the film do not leave a void; instead, they give space for every girl to plug her dreams into the socket of Pari’s story. For the 12 million child brides around the world “whose dreams will never take flight”, Sitara is a clarion call for change.
Although in many ways, the story of every woman is a universal one, in Sitara, Obaid-Chinoy is not drawing from her own experience. Unlike Pari, she is one of the lucky few women in Pakistan whose dreams were not clipped. She was rudely awakened from her privileged world of tennis tournaments and country clubs when, one morning, a young beggar girl with “the most beautiful eyes” pressed her face against her car window. It was a revelatory moment that changed the trajectory of her life. Later, she became a champion for Pakistani women, not just telling their stories, but almost making them her own. Pari’s story might not be yours, but in the hands of a skillful story-teller like Obaid-Chinoy, it takes wings.