ZEAL for Unity brings India, Pakistan directors together at Wagah border

On Tuesday, people in Amritsar witnessed a rare event -- six directors from India and six from Pakistan crossed over to the soil in Pakistan and India respectively at the Wagah border. The reason was a unique cultural exchange which, for the first time, brought collaborations on the celluloid amongst filmmakers and artistes from either side of the border.

The initiative was brought to fruition by the Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) under its ZEAL for Unity programme. Under the programme, each of these directors has made a film focusing on the varied ideas of freedom against the backdrop of the usually volatile India-Pakistan bilateral relations.

Puneet Goenka, MD and CEO of ZEEL, said that he has had long-standing ties with Pakistan, with several friends being there, and it was just a matter of when...

Shailja Kejriwal, Chief Creative, Special Projects, ZEEL, said that after the success of Zindagi the team felt it was important to show more Pakistani creative content here. "When I went to Pakistan for promotion of Zindagi, I found that there was so much to see from Pakistan," she said.

She added that due to several restrictions, most of the content was okayed over phone and Skype calls. Shailja also said that this was the first time that an Indian entity has produced Pakistani content.

The Indian filmmakers include Ketan Mehta, Aparna Sen, Nikkhil Advani, Tanuja Chandra, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Bejoy Nambiar. And, their Pakistani counterparts were Sabiha Sumar, Khalid Ahmad, Mehreen Jabbar, Meenu and Farjad, Shahbaz Sumar and Siraj-Ul-Haque.

Each director has made a movie for ZEAL for Unity. Shailja explained that each one has interpreted in his or her own sense what freedom is. While for Aparna Sen, it has been the freedom to express one's own identity, for Sabiha Sumar, it is the freedom from the baggage of one's past. Timangshu Dhulia explores freedom from religion, and Bejoy Nambiar looks at freedom to do what one wants to do.

Pakistani director Khalid Ahmad, who is also the maternal uncle of director Imtiaz Ali, has made a movie named Laloolal.com. He left India in the 1970s, and says that borders are for politicians alone. "There's is no anti-India sentiment majorly in Pakistan, excluding the religious hardliners. We are the same across the borders," he said.

Five-time National Award winner Aparna Sen, who made Saari Raat for the initiative, said that artistes are not concerned about borders. "These are just shadow borders, we are all friends here," she said while posing for a photo-op at the historic Wagah border.