It’s a quiet Wednesday evening at Olo Junction, a small but well-regarded destination for art and cultural events in general, in Muslim Town, Lahore. I am waiting in the lawn for a film screening to begin. I’ve arrived much too early.

I look at the Facebook event page again: the film I’m seeing tonight is called Abu, and it has won 15 international awards so far. Also, it “is a very personal film about the life of the Montreal-based Pakistani director Arshad Khan and his complicated relationship with his conservative, Muslim father.” It is supposed to be “a clash between east and west, old and new.” But at its heart lies “the story of love between family”. I re-read the phrase, “a very personal film.”

My point of contact in the Olomopolo management tells me that the director has been very cautious about how, where and when to screen the film. I am told he’s been a bit ambivalent about media coverage because of the film’s sensitive subject matter. Despite this, however, Khan has been rather swift in granting my request to come watch the film and write about it.

It’s now closer to the time of the screening and a very modest crowd has gathered. The venue management starts to usher everyone into the screening room, with its signature floor cushions. I take a seat in the back. The event begins.

Arshad Khan briefly introduces himself and the film. He is tall, and speaks with an assured and lilting voice. He thanks everyone for coming and warns the audience that some may find Abu triggering.

Abu is a documentary film told in first person by Khan who wrote, produced and directed it. The film is co-written by Matt Jones and Omar Majeed, with Shelly Tepperman serving as story editor. Abu also features the work of Oscar-winning sound designer Sylvain Bellemare, animation from Davide di Saro, music by Michael Robert Snow. The project began in 2013 and took several years to complete, as Khan struggled to get the film made, calling its mere existence “a miracle.” The film had its Canadian premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival in 2017.

The story begins   in 2011

Khan narrates a nightmare he had about a “monster” he and his younger brother encountered on a rainy night on road in a forest. The encounter is ominous and leaves a sense of foreboding. This is immediately juxtaposed with real-life photos of Khan’s younger brother celebrating a wedding in Pakistan. This would prove to be an effective narrative decision as it sets up the conflicted tone of the film: a story about a life in which, despite appearances, all is not as well as it appears.

After the opening sequence, Khan talks about his father, an orphaned migrant at the time of the Partition, in 1947. He talks about his father’s love of photography in his youth, and how he always had the latest home photography equipment. This included a VHS handycam in the early 1980s, footage from which is extensively used throughout the film. In fact, Khan terms his film a “found-footage documentary”.

It is through this deeply personal lens that we see Khan’s childhood in Islamabad: the second youngest child in a family of several siblings, a boy who never quite fit in, adored his oldest sister, and loved to dress up. We see Khan’s family singing, dancing, making excursions, and more. This was clearly a family accustomed to being on camera and was, by all appearances, happy.

However, it isn’t long before Khan speaks of being abused as a child by an older boy. The change in the film’s tone is stark and immediate; the unease in the room is palpable. The sense of trauma from the incident hangs over the entire movie after this point.

Khan then describes an often tumultuous childhood, after his father took an early retirement from the Army and struggled to find his footing. This struggle would continue throughout his father’s life, especially after his family migrated to Canada in the early 1990s.

In his early teenage years, Khan discovered sexual intimacy. He reveals that it left him conflicted and sidelined, as he tried to navigate life in a conservative Zia-era Pakistan as a young homosexual man. While his family did not immediately know about his orientation, Khan describes his relationship with his parents becoming increasingly strained.

The rest of the film examines Khan’s life at various stages, as he comes to grips with his identity as a young man, especially after his family migrates to Canada. He discusses the pain of leaving the lush green hills of Islamabad for a harsh, frozen tundra where, despite a new start, he still cannot fit in. We see Khan becoming an activist and, most importantly, coming out to his parents, neither of whom react very well.

His parents become increasingly more religious, especially his father, who become more and more controlling. This opens a rift in Khan’s relationship with his father; and it is this rift, intensified after Khan reveals his homosexuality to his parents, which serves as the backdrop for the remainder of the film as Khan continues his journey of self-exploration, culminating in the death of his father.

As the film ends

Several audience members are visibly shaken, some in tears. Khan reappears, to raucous applause, beaming and silent.

If he felt vulnerable or exposed, it doesn’t show, especially in the Q&A session that follows. The audience’s questions are minimal. They nevertheless draw candid responses from the filmmaker. He discusses the resistance he faced from his family who thought the film would bring shame to them; “shame” being a word of Khan’s own choosing, as he describes its toxic effects on people’s lives and how it is used to exert control over them.

Khan says that his reasons for making the film were, firstly, to have a film that speaks to the history of Pakistanis as a people with their own culture outside of the narrative of terrorism and conflict; and secondly, to have a film that offers our youth something that can resonate with them and their struggles.

Khan feels very strongly that it was important for his family, his lifelong trauma and personal growth to be documented for posterity. In this, he feels, he has succeeded. He also believes that the film preserves his father’s legacy.

As a film, Abu feels like it’s about a lot of things all at once: childhood memories and trauma, the pain and pleasure of coming of age, class issues in Pakistan, finding out who you are as a person and what your role is in the world, and how all of this fits in with what is expected of you by the world in which you live, your family and your loved ones — by yourself, especially as a Pakistani.

The film feels meandering in parts, appearing to lose sight of its central thesis of the filmmaker’s troubled relationship with his father. However, the problem fixes itself by the end of the film. Considered as a whole, it’s a story of one person’s life, told with sincerity, tenderness and candour. Despite its subject matter, it’s often light-hearted and suitably sensitive.

Khan frequently makes use of clips from old Bollywood films and references to Hollywood to add levity to the film and make it more relatable for the audiences. Additionally, it is no small feat in archival storytelling, as Khan deftly picks through the remnants of his past to construct a story with a fairly clear arc.

Ultimately, Abu is about a person finding out who he is, whilst anchored by his connection to an immensely key figure in his life: his father.

Abu will next be showing in Karachi at the T2F on March 1 (today) and 4.