By
Jerry Beck
|
Animation Scoop
Sat Dec 27 01:25:44 EST 2014
Pakistan's fist ever CG animated feature 3 Bahadur ("Three Brave") will be released in 2015. Directed by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, an acclaimed journalist and documentary filmmaker, winner of an Academy Award for her documentary, Saving Face in 2012 - as well as an Emmy for her documentary, Pakistan: Children of the Taliban in 2010. This is her first animated film.
According to animation historian Fred Patten, 3 Bahadur is not just Pakistan's first CG animated feature, but Pakistan's first theatrical animated feature of any sort. A landmark for the history books.
The three "braves" are 11-year-old Amna and her best friends, Saadi and Kamil, on the cusp of adolescence where, in Pakistan, cultural expectations mean the pathways of girls and boys must separate. Set in a fictional town, the characters set out to save their community from a menancing villain and his fumbling thugs. All the dialogue is in Urdu. "We have taken special care to ensure that the story remains very local," says director Chinoy, "from the way we have designed our characters, to our dialogue and our script. We want children to see Pakistani characters who look like them and talk like them on the big screen for the first time."
