My Pure Land, directed by British-Pakistani filmmaker Sarmad Masud, has been selected as Britain’s official submission to the Oscars under the Foreign Language category, reports Variety.
The film is based on the remarkable true story of a mother and two daughters who survived a siege on their rural home, picking up guns to fight off a militia of 200 bandits. The women do all they can to survive and with their supply of bullets dwindling they still refuse to give in. The film was shot in Pakistan.
Speaking about the film to The Guardian in a recent interview, Masud says the original story idea was something else. “I originally wanted to make a film in Pakistan about police corruption, like Cop Land. Then in 2013, I came across a story of this woman who had defended her home and land from 200 bandits. That’s much better than a ‘Pakistani Cop Land’ so I contacted [the journalist] who wrote the piece and through that, rang Nazo Dharejo [real woman the film is based on],” he says.
The production banner describes the film as “a violent contemporary Western but grounded in realism and crucially with a feminist theme.”
Feature Image: FilmLondon.org.uk
