It has all the makings of a comic riot: a Karachi-based reporter finds
an Osama Bin Laden look-alike and decides to shoot a video of him to get
worldwide fame (and an elusive U.S.
visa).
This is the plot of the film Tere
Bin Laden, which stars one of Pakistan's
most popular musicians, Ali Zafar, and was produced and primarily filmed in India.
However, the film will release tomorrow in India
but not in Pakistan.
The film was not given clearance for a cinema release by the Central Board of
Film Censors. The case has forwarded to an appellate board for review.
The reasons for the ban have been vague at best. While one report said
that the ban was due to fears of
a terrorist attack, another stated that the film was bound to create
controversy. While the move by the censorship board has drawn ire from fans
of the film, it has contradicted the current practices in place in the country.
Foreign and local films releasing in the country's cinemas are barely touched
by the censors, and questions about censorship rules are often met by with
scoffs by distributors.
Censorship in Pakistan
has usually been for religious reasons, such as the ban on films like The Da Vinci Code,
or the recent move to block
Facebook, which is why the censor board's decision was unexpected.
Promotion for the film has primarily taken place in India,
but there was a great deal of buzz about it in Indian
and Pakistan
film circles.
As a cautionary move, Zafar (who was distributing the film in Pakistan) had changed
the film's title earlier this month to Tere Bin (Without You, in Urdu) for the
country. At
that time, he said, "The sensibilities in Pakistan
are somewhat different from the international market and our main intention was
to ensure that people do not conceive it was a spoof of Osama Bin Laden or the
Taliban because it is not; it is a very pro-Pakistan comedy about a Pakistani
journalist wanting to go to the U.S."
The title change itself did not make much sense, given that Pakistan would
be the last place in the world where people would be unfamiliar with the name bin
Laden. Posters of the film had already been placed in cinemas in certain cities and the name Tere Bin Laden was
well-known.
But that move was in vain. The fate of Ali Zafar's film now lies in the
hands of the government, and as with any other Indian film that is released in Pakistan,
the film will undoubtedly be pirated and sold in DVD and CD stores.
Saba Imtiaz works
for The Express Tribune, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan.
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