Yasir Hussain, Ayesha Omar’s ‘Javed Iqbal’ makes the cut for DC South Asian Film Festival
The 11th annual film festival will take off in Washington DC, US on November 1 and will run till November 8, event organisers announced on its social media handles. This year’s festival will witness entries from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Tibet. The event’s website is yet to be updated with entries from the said countries and while its social media handles have offered a glimpse of the films that’ll grace the screens in November, Javed Iqbal is yet to be granted a mention.
But Aleeha has confirmed it has made the cut. Sharing a breaking news about the same on his Twitter, the filmmaker wrote, “Javed Iqbal has crossed another milestone! Selected for the DC South Asian Film Festival in November.” The film’s lead, Omar, also shared the announcement on her Instagram Stories writing, “Alhamdulillah! Another festival for our efforts. Yasss!”
The DC South Asian Arts Council is a non-profit organisation that aims to offer opportunities from around the world to South Asian artists attending the festival, who display their talents via films, dance, music, books, theatre, cooking, fashion and paintings, among other artforms.
The Abu Aleeha directorial had its world premiere at the UK Film Festival in May where Hussain bagged an award in the Best Actor category while Aleeha, whose real name is Ali Sajjad Shah, picked up the Best Director award.
Javed Iqbal was originally slated to release across cinemas in Pakistan in October last year. But its premiere was pushed to December 24 because it had yet to receive a clearance from the censor boards. The film’s release experienced another delay in December due to a rise in Covid-19 cases, and was pushed to January 28.
With the new date announced, the film had its Karachi premiere at Neuplex Cinema on January 25, attended by the cast and crew as well as other members of the entertainment fraternity. The very next day, the director took to Twitter to announce that the Punjab government had put a halt to the film because of which, it could no longer release as promised. There has been no announcement about its potential release since.
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