by HUMA QURESHI
Hammad Khan, director of Slackistan – the coming-of-age film about a bunch of bored, rich young Pakistanis cruising around Islamabad with nothing to do – could have probably seen it coming.
After two and a half months of deliberating, Pakistan’s Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) announced yesterday that it has officially banned the movie from cinema release, unless it makes extensive cuts which would which Khan says would undermine the film in its totality.
Even with the cuts, the film would still only be classified with an 18+ certificate, meaning the teenage audience, to whom the film is geared to as much to its 20 and 30-something viewers, won’t be able to see it.
Why? Because Slackistan contains the word “Taliban”, the word “lesbian”, swear words in English and Urdu, scenes showing characters drinking (fake alcohol for the filming, incidentally) and a joke about beards (as in, “my beard is longer than your beard”) made between characters talking hypothetically about a fancy dress party. These are not the CBFC’s only objections, but the main ones it’s highlighted. Unless these objections, and many more are addressed, the film has no chance of ever being released in Pakistan.
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