REPORT
Top 5 Pakistani films of
2015
T
hese past 12 months have seen the Pakistani entertainment industry flourish immensely, and the
coming year looks just as promising. With box office clashes and back-to-back releases of over a dozen
films, one can rightfully say that 2015 was a launch pad
for Pakistani films that will see a major boom in forthcoming years.
Here is a list of the top five films that made it big this
year:
5. Wrong No.
If Shoaib Mansoor’s Khuda Kay Liye encouraged Pakistani film-makers to make films then Nabeel Qureshi’s
Na Maloom Afraad gave them the local recipe for a
masala film. A simple urban tale interwoven in the true
Pakistani spirit of facing hardships with a smile, garnished with the right amount of romance and drama.
Yasir Nawaz’s Wrong No. employed the same trick and
succeeded to a certain extent. Sallu (Danish Taimoor)
belongs to a family of professional butchers who instead
of adopting the family trade wants to become an actor.
His father Hajji Abba (Javed Sheikh) wants his son to get
a job and the friction between the father and son continues until Sallu runs away from home. What follows is
an often funny and sometimes boring comedy of errors,
layered forcefully with music and a plot that is well con-
structed but borrowed from various Bollywood films. The
strength of Wrong No. lies in some of its very strong and
engaging situations that surgically carve the humour out
of everyday Pakistani life.
4. 3 Bahadur
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s 3 Bahadur is an effort to
give the children of today a chance to think and dream
about local heroes. The movie is based in Roshan Basti
where everything seems to be going fine until Mangu
(Ally Khan) meets Baba Balaam (Nadir Siddiqui) who
disappears after giving Mangu the key to evil powers.
Mangu starts using those powers against the innocent
dwellers of the town until Kamil (Hanzala Shahid), Saadi
(Zuhab Khan) and Amna (Muneeba Yaseen) sneak into
the tower where he lives. There, they are gifted with special powers by a flying object (not clearly identified in the
film). Thus begins a war of good against evil and the old
order versus the new. Despite being a surface-level attempt at the art of animation, 3 Bahadur’s post-production team deserves credit for giving hope to Pakistani
animation artists.
3. Manto
Sarmad Khoosat’s biopic of the towering short story writer was one of the most talked-about films to come out
this year. The film follows troubled years of the late writ-
8 | BOOM