023 is the year of landmarks in pop culture across multiple disciplines. Atif Aslam is celebrating 20 years in music; Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is celebrating 20 years as a filmmaker as are other musicians in the counterculture scene, such as Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey, founder of Cape Monze Records. Coke Studio is coming back for its 15th year and Lahooti Melo is also celebrating a decade of existence. These various platforms have been instrumental in providing and raising the bar across the performing and art industries.

A name that we keep coming back to is that of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who has been working as a filmmaker for
20 years. Her accomplishments aside, the idealistic filmmaker, told Instep recently that she is still someone who looks at the glass half-full.

She won her first Academy Award for Saving Face, a documentary about acid attack victims in 2012. Her second Academy Award (2016) was the result of a harrowing, hard-hitting and realistic work, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness.

All this makes her the perfect person to talk to about another milestone as Pakistan celebrates 10 years of the inception of Pakistan Oscar Committee, which began under her aegis in 2013. The reason for zooming in on Obaid-Chinoy – more than other members - is because she’s the chair of the Pakistan Oscar Committee and someone who also knows the Oscar circuit better than anyone else in the country.

Every year since 2013, the Pakistan Oscar Committee has selected what can only be described as the best of the best of Pakistani cinema since the revival of films and the committee came into being.

What does the Pakistan Oscar Committee look for in a film? How many films do they watch before selecting one? It feels like an obvious question but in this context holds enormous value.

“I’ve always wanted the Pakistan Oscar Committee as an independent body in the country. It sends films that we as a country are proud of and now the committee is in its tenth year. We’ve sent a film every year barring one year where we didn’t have a film to send. If you look at the films that have been sent each year, you realize thatit is a film that should have been sent.”– Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on how the Pakistan Oscar Committee operates

But as Obaid-Chinoy explains, the process is a little different.

“No, we don’t look at all the films,” she clarifies. “We only watch films that are submitted to us. There are three or four films made in a year.”

Discussing the question at length, Obaid-Chinoy further notes, “Firstly, Pakistan only creates 3-4 films [although that number has improved somewhat] in a single year. Out of those 3-4 films, filmmakers know that some are not just qualified to be submitted or selected at the Oscars.

“We get 3 entries in a year at best. In those films, you know very early on which film is going to make it because as a committee, we want to put the best of Pakistan forward. The fact that Joyland was shortlisted this year is enormous for a country like Pakistan.”

As for the Pakistan Oscar Committee, she says, “I’ve always wanted the Pakistan Oscar Committee as an independent body in the country. It sends films that we as a country are proud of and now the committee is in its tenth year,” says the filmmaker, activist and journalist, “we’ve sent a film every year barring one year where we didn’t have a film to send. If you look at the films sent each year, you realize that it is a film that should have been sent.”

To arrive at that point in Pakistan is even more challenging. Time will tell. But Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is optimistic about the future given how Joyland was shortlisted. May there be many more years when Pakistan is proud to send a film and the number of films produced that can be sent for submission increase.