India has got the label "anti-national", while Pakistan has got "blasphemy" (disrespect to God or religion). Both are all-purpose "brahmastras", commonly used like alu-tamatar, whenever anyone in power wants to get rid of someone asking inconvenient questions. So last week brought the thrilling news that Sarmad Sultan Khoosat's film Zindagi Tamasha (Circus of Life, in Punjabi and Urdu, a film that explores blasphemy), was selected as Pakistan's entry for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. Hats off to the Oscar selection committee for choosing this daring film that calls out many hypocrisies in Pakistani society. The film had already won the Kim Ji-seok Award at the Busan Film Festival in 2019. The committee included filmmakers Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Asim Abbasi (Churails), Maheen Zia and Hamza Bangash, among others. The film features Arif Hassan, the lovely Samiya Mumtaz, Eman Suleman and Ali Kureshi. It will be shown free online by the Engendered I View World film festival on December 20; and online by the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival in Canada, on December 12.

The film is about the middle-aged Muhammad Rahat Khwaja, a famous Naat Khwan (reciter of poems praising the Prophet), who is devoted to his sick wife, and one day happens to dance to an old Lollywood film song at a wedding. His life unravels after somebody films him and the video goes viral-his married daughter Sadaf is ashamed and refuses to talk to him, everyone treats him like a pariah, and the mullahs force him to make a counter-video apologising for his "indecent and vulgar actions". (Meanwhile in India, where Bollywood songs are inherited in our DNA, Dancing Uncle got 31 million hits on YouTube for his terrific shaadi-ka-naach-gaana). The film celebrates South Asia's passionate love of song and dance, especially old filmi gaane from Bollywood (Mumbai) and, in this case, Lollywood (Lahore). It also daringly calls out fundamentalists misusing religion and blasphemy laws to harass innocent people, as well as middle class hypocrisy. At the heart of the film is the question-s dancing a sin? If a man says namaz five times a day, why can't he also dance at a wedding, for god's sake? It also questions our ageist culture-a youngster dancing at a wedding is cool, but why denounce an older man doing the same?