Doodh Patti

Director: Nabeel Qureshi

Plot: Two down-on-their-luck small-time hoodlums strike gold when their local mob boss dies of cardiac arrest while scolding them. The duo decides to hide their dead former employer in the back of his Ancholi casino in Karachi, and discover he was secretly hoarding smuggled chai ki patti in the spare rooms. Ledgers describe his dealings with the biggest tea manufacturers in Pakistan, whom he has been selling to at ridiculously inflated prices. While they start cutting their own deals, their deliveries are sometimes thwarted when local police seem to have been alerted of untoward activity. They find that the mob boss’s feisty daughter is behind the tip-offs, and now they must include her in their deals. What ends up happening is a madcap race against the police and time, with romance, drama, music, and lots of double-crossing!

Starring: Fahad Mustafa, obvs. Hania Aamir. Second guy is whoever.

Boston Chalo!

Director: Nadeem Baig

Plot: A simple CSS student living his best life in Lahore’s Model Town, is traumatized when his corner shop runs out of patti smack in the middle of exams. Without chai, he cannot hack it at all. Ever the scholar, our hero dives into tea crises and history, and finds out there might be a treasure of patti somewhere in the depths of Boston Harbor. But first, he must collect the funds to apply for the visa, make it through the interview, and also collect funds for the ticket. He figures he can pay for his living costs by selling tea on the streets of New Jersey where his paternal uncle lives, and then pay for his and his loot’s way back so his Pakistani brethren can once more enjoy their shaam ki chai. Some Pakistani-American girl finds his tea stall at farmer’s market and pursues him, while he shies away from her brazen advances. Songs happen, and lots of dancing too.

Starring: Humayun Saeed, Mehwish Hayat, and guest appearance by Ahsan Khan as the British-Asian actor who feels victimized by the war on his dual cultures of endless tea drinking.

Tumhare Liye

Director: Shoaib Mansoor

Five young men, asked to guard their snowy, mountain-top village in an ambiguous location in Pakistan, enjoy gathering around the fire all day and night drinking tea, and talking about their families, goats, fiancees, and boyhood while they stay alert for gangs from a rivaling village that might try to enter their sacred land.We see everything in flashback and song, which are warm and celebratory, and each time are snapped back to the present, which is dark, quiet, and cold. In the final 30 minutes, while the enemies finally attack, the youngest of our five young men falls over a cliff, but is rescued by his friends who make a human rope, and canvas around the edge of the cliff, primed to silently defeat the enemy. In the final four-and-a-half minutes, the famous mountain saint, who lives in seclusion, emerges from his cave and addresses both villages, talking in metaphors, telling them that, ‘jab paanch baazoo jurte hain, tu who baazoo nahi, mazbooti ka rassa bun jaate hain.’ Everyone cheers.

Starring: Since Hamza Ali Abbassi and Osman Khalid Butt are past the very young naïve man stage, anyone who fits that physical mould.

Ghaddaar

Bilal Lashari

Major (retd.) Mujtaba Rizvi is called back to duty when Somali pirates capture a shipment of tea from Sri Lanka to Pakistan. Rizvi puts all his spidey senses to work, and realizes that this isn’t Somali pirates at all, but the age-old Pakistan ke dushman, who want to pay Pakistan back for that cup of tea from 2019. They have spent the last four years setting up an underwater operation, where they will intercept all tea shipments to Pakistan and divert them to their country. Jab Pakistani chai nahi piyen ge, tu jang kaise larrein ge? Rizvi is assigned a sidekick who happens to be a woman and only appears in the backdrop sometimes, and a wisecracking marine biologist, who is both nerdy and inappropriate, while they take an entire army of men head-on by themselves, all underwater. Bilal Lashari spares no expense with the sets and FX, and for that alone, the film becomes a massive blockbuster. In the aftermath, Akshaye Kumar and Ajay Devgn tweet about how cowards can only dream of winning wars, while a new investigation about Shah Rukh Khan’s finances opens up.

Starring: Shaan Shahid, any woman actor who can attempt a weird accent and doesn’t mind being a pretty prop, and Ali Gul Pir.

Pyaali

Director: Sarmad Khoosat

A young woman from rural Punjab falls in love with her brother’s friend. The friend is in the army and often on tour of duty, but they are determined to make it work. Every time he comes home, they meet in their mohalla’s market, and drink cups upon cups of tea while they talk for hours. Next to their table is a lone woman, who sits and stares at her empty teacup all day and night. She tells our heroine that, ‘dekh rahi hoon, ke meri pyaali kab khaali hui, aur ab kaise bharey gi?’. But as the story goes on, the woman finds her beau still in love with her, but deteriorating physically. He starts losing hair, which also turns grey. Every time he returns, the lines on his face are deeper. The woman listens to his troubles, but does not grasp how they are eroding his spirit. Eventually, the man kneels before her to apologize, kisses her hand, and then walks off into the fog, for his final tour of duty. The woman now sits across from the older woman at the tea shop, staring into her own empty cup, wondering how something that had once run over so delightfully could now be so empty.

Starring: Sajal Aly, Sania Saeed, Ali Rehman

All films will find immediate partnerships in Pakistan, and all on-ground activations will involve free chai. In case of continuing shortage, people will be enticed into watching the movies with the promise of at least one kilogram of the sponsor tea.