Ali Zafar is a very important young individual in our Pakistani cinema to be working for the development of the silver screen, which hasn’t recovered fully since 2005!

The busy singer and actor is one of the very few film-makers and artistes in this country, who have, through a long thought process, become convinced to try to make a career in the Pakistan show biz industry! In this context, amongst those working in India off and on, Mahira has been steadily working in the local cinema, but Fawad Khan doesn’t seem to be convinced in his heart that he should join the local works full time. Atif Aslam hasn’t sung too many songs for the local flicks, and Rahat Fateh also seems to be keeping himself aloof. In fact, few top-rated music artistes have contributed to our films in recent years. What seems to be the trouble?

Fortunately, for Pakistan, Ali Zafar has decided to do the best he can for the local cinema. His Teefa in Trouble is flying high, with already over Rs 13 crores under its belt till the writing of this column, on the Election Day. As for others, some of our samajhdar producers and directors, like Humayun Saeed, Fizza Ali Meerza, Hareem Farooq etc, can add to the numbers with better planning. The reaction meted out to films, Shor Sharaba and Jackpot proves that professional attitudes were missing in their publicity, distribution and exhibition. We have two big films this year, namely Saat Din Mohabbat In (SDMI) and Teefa in Trouble (TiT), and both have good scripts, production, and characterisation.