couple of summers ago, our worlds were rocked by Ahmed Sarym’s Midsummer Chaos, a show the writer-director released on the Qissa Nagri channel on YouTube. Generally seven minutes long, each episode was as – for lack of a better adjective – inexplicable as the next, but the story was still somehow so compelling, that the show had its following that waited for each episode to drop every week.

This fall, Midsummer Chaos 2 hits our screens, telling, according to series creator Ahmed Sarym, a whole new story.

“When I moved to Lahore last year for college, my co-writer, Ayesha Naveed and I randomly started drawing up character sketches for Midsummer Chaos, had it been based in Lahore,” Sarym tells Instep.

“That’s when we had this epiphany that culturally, the two cities are very different and telling another coming-of-age story, but with a new setting, authentically coming from a hardcore Lahori like Ayesha would be really interesting. When we started writing it, I knew it was material I was drawn to and simply had to bring to life, applying all my learnings from the first season in terms of script and the technique, which I hope is reflective in the series.”

“I think as a budding, independent filmmaker, it’s also really important for me to simply be honest with the stories I want to tell. For now, it’s Midsummer Chaos’ humble little world that I’ve tried creating, going forward, it’ll be something new. I made the first instalment at a time when I’d just gotten done with my A’Levels and this time around, it’s Ayesha’s story, recounting her angsty teenage years in Lahore. She’s written the characters with so much depth and empathy, I personally, really enjoyed directing it and hope our overly-judgmental audience can see through the memes also.”

– Ahmed Sarym was speaking to Amina Baig.