The sons of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan were leftwith tears in their eyes after watching the upcoming movie of their mother,Jemima Khan.
The movie, “What’s love got to do with it?”, is a cross-cultural romanticcomedy that Jemima has used to portray a different and better side ofPakistan — and not the “scary” one.
During an interview, Jemima said that she showed the movie to her children— Qasim Khan and Suleman Khan — who are also her “biggest” critics.
“Their reaction has been the highlight of my whole experience because theyare not rom-com lovers and don’t like those kinds of films and they are mybiggest critics.”
“Obviously, they are half-Pakistani Muslim kids, so whether they liked itor not was very very important to me,” she said.
“I got them to see it [the film] and […] at the end of it, I could seethem being like a little tearful and I also heard them laughing and theysaid ‘amma we’re so proud of you’,” Jemima revealed.
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“And I think, they knew how hard I had worked at it. I literally thought,oh well, even if no one likes it, this is the moment I’m proud of,” sheadded.
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Talking about her inspiration behind the movie, Jemima said she wanted toshow another side of Pakistan to the world.
“I wanted to show the colourful, beautiful, joyful place that I knew when Iwas in Pakistan as opposed to Pakistan we often see on the Westernscreens,” the filmmaker said. “You know quite often in films such as ZeroDark Thirty and Homeland, you see Muslims and Pakistanis depicted as thebaddies and Pakistan is seen as a really scary, dark place.”
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“And so I got a chance to make the romantic comedy version of Pakistan,with Working Title Film that invested in rom-coms, with a beautiful castwith Sajal Ali who is a beautiful Pakistani actress and very talentedShabana Azmi from India who is an absolute goddess and Lily James who iswonderful and Emma Thomson, Shahzad Latif, and others.”
Jemima shared that one of the best things that she learnt in Pakistan wasto develop faith in “niyat” (intention) and she hopes that Pakistanis willjudge her film through her “niyat” which is aimed at portraying them as”normal people and not scary creatures”.