After the much-awaited trailer for Nabeel Qureshi’s upcoming film Load Wedding released Tuesday night, the long-drawn comparisons with Punjab Nahi Jaungi have started to surface once again. But are they valid? We asked the ace filmmaker what he thought.
Speaking to Something Haute, Nabeel made it clear that the film’s storyline or the visual aesthetics of it are poles apart from PNJ, and thus, such comparisons are nothing but arbitrary coincidences.
“It’s just like I made films which focused on Karachi, so maybe then the others who made films here were told that you’re copying Na Maloom Afraad [laughs],” Nabeel said. “The comparisons exist because of timing actually since the film released just last year, but this is way apart from Punjab Nahi Jaungi, narratively and visually. I have shown a raw, organic Punjab, and it’s not glossy at all. You’ll feel that it’s believable and authentic.”
The film focuses on the mechanisms of marriage in the country.
The Na Maloom Afraad director also claimed that while the Nadeem Baig directorial titled itself around Punjab, there were hardly any visuals of it in reality.
“I personally think that in PNJ, they never even showed Punjab, it was just in the name. They said it’s a film based in Faisalabad but you don’t even see one drone-shot of it,” the filmmaker said. “That’s their creative liberty, anybody can take it and that’s fine.”
Concludingly, Nabeel also mentioned that the reason to choose to make a film in a certain place comes from the demand of the script.
“The script demanded that we shoot in Punjab, as it’s based around a staunch Punjabi family, and so we did,” he said. “Last time for NMA 2, we went to South Africa because the story was based there.”
There you have it, folks! We hope this clears the air out on that situation.
Starring Fahad Mustafa and Mehwish Hayat, Load Wedding is a social commentary on the marriage system in the country, and questions the various mechanisms of it. The film is slated to release on Eid-Ul-Azha.
