Sarmad Masud’s debut My Pure Land, a Pakistani-British film, has been chosen as Britain’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar race, according to reports by Variety.
The film tells the true story of a mother and her two daughters in rural Pakistan who were forced to defend their land from a militia that included 200 bandits. It’s submission is very important as it gives way to an Urdu-language film for the first time as Britain’s for the foreign-language Oscar.
Masud is an up-and-coming director, who earned critical acclaim with his short film Two Dosas, funded by Film London and voted best film in their London Calling Plus category.
My Pure Land was shot in Pakistan in strenuous conditions. The movie’s production company, Bill Kenwright Films, said that the crew had to negotiate their way through heavily armed citizen regions with the production banner describing the film as ‘a violent contemporary Western but grounded in realism and crucially with a feminist theme.’
https://youtu.be/rdY8bKCVIC0
Produced by Bill Kenwright, with credits including Rufus Norris’ Broken, the movie world-premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and opened in the UK on the 15th of this month.
