-
I'm a storyteller,
-
but I'm also a troublemaker.
-
(Laughter)
-
And I have a habit
of asking difficult questions.
-
It started when I was 10 years old,
-
and my mother, who was raising
six children, had no time for them.
-
At 14, fed up with my increasingly
annoying questions,
-
she recommended that I begin writing
for the local English-language newspaper
-
in Pakistan,
-
to put my questions out
to the entire country, she said.
-
(Laughter)
-
At 17, I was an undercover
investigative journalist.
-
I don't even think my editor knew
just how young I was
-
when I sent in a story
that named and shamed
-
some very powerful people.
-
The men I'd written about
wanted to teach me a lesson.
-
They wanted to shame me and my family.
-
They spray-painted my name
and my family's name
-
with unspeakable profanities
across our front gate
-
and around our neighborhood.
-
And they felt that my father,
who was a strict man of tradition,
-
would stop me.
-
Instead, my father stood
in front of me and said,
-
"If you speak the truth,
I will stand with you,
-
and so will the world."
-
And then he got --
-
(Applause)
-
And then he got a group of people together
and they whitewashed the walls.
-
(Laughter)
-
I've always wanted my stories
to jolt people,
-
to shake them into having
difficult conversations.
-
And I felt that I would be more effective
if I did something visual.
-
And so at 21, I became
a documentary filmmaker,
-
turning my camera
onto marginalized communities
-
on the front lines in war zones,
-
eventually returning home to Pakistan,
-
where I wanted to document
violence against women.
-
Pakistan is home to 200 million people.
-
And with its low levels of literacy,
-
film can change the way
people perceive issues.
-
An effective storyteller
speaks to our emotions,
-
elicits empathy and compassion,
-
and forces us to look
at things differently.
-
In my country, film had the potential
to go beyond cinema.
-
It could change lives.
-
The issues that I've always
wanted to raise --
-
I've always wanted to hold up
a mirror to society --
-
they've been driven
by my barometer of anger.
-
And my barometer of anger
led me, in 2014, to honor killings.
-
Honor killings take place
in many parts of the world,
-
where men punish women
who transgress rules made by them:
-
women who choose
to marry on their own free will;
-
or women who are looking for a divorce;
-
or women who are suspected
of having illicit relationships.
-
In the rest of the world, honor killings
would be known as murder.
-
I always wanted to tell that story
from the perspective of a survivor.
-
But women do not live to tell their tale,
-
and instead end up in unmarked graves.
-
So one morning when
I was reading the newspaper,
-
and I read that a young woman
had miraculously survived
-
after being shot in the face
by her father and her uncle
-
because she chose to marry a man
out of her free will,
-
I knew I had found my storyteller.
-
Saba was determined to send
her father and her uncle to jail,
-
but in the days after
leaving the hospital,
-
pressure mounted on her to forgive.
-
You see, there was a loophole in the law
-
that allowed for victims
to forgive perpetrators,
-
enabling them to avoid jail time.
-
And she was told
that she would be ostracized
-
and her family, her in-laws,
-
they would all be shunned
from the community,
-
because many felt that her father
had been well within his right,
-
given her transgression.
-
She fought on --
-
for months.
-
But on the final day in court,
-
she gave a statement forgiving them.
-
As filmmakers, we were devastated,
-
because this was not the film
that we had set out to make.
-
In hindsight, had she pressed charges,
fought the case and won,
-
hers would have been an exception.
-
When such a strong woman is silenced,
-
what chance did other women have?
-
And we began to think about using our film
-
to change the way people
perceived honor killings,
-
to impact the loophole in the law.
-
And then our film was nominated
for an Academy Award,
-
and honor killings became headline news,
-
and the prime minister,
while sending his congratulations,
-
offered to host the first screening
of the film at his office.
-
Of course, we jumped at the chance,
-
because no prime minister in the history
of the country had ever done so.
-
And at the screening,
-
which was carried live
on national television,
-
he said something that reverberated
throughout the country:
-
"There is no honor
in honor killings," he said.
-
(Applause)
-
At the Academy Awards in LA,
-
many of the pundits had written us off,
-
but we felt that in order
for the legislative push to continue,
-
we needed that win.
-
And then, my name was announced,
-
and I bounded up the steps in flip-flops,
because I didn't expect to be onstage.
-
(Laughter)
-
And I accepted the statue,
telling a billion people watching
-
that the Prime Minister of Pakistan
had pledged to change the law,
-
because, of course, that's one way
of holding the prime minister accountable.
-
(Laughter)
-
And --
-
(Applause)
-
Back home, the Oscar win
dominated headline news,
-
and more people joined the fray,
-
asking for the loophole
in the law to be closed.
-
And then in October 2016,
after months of campaigning,
-
the loophole was indeed closed.
-
(Applause)
-
And now men who kill women
in the name of honor
-
receive life imprisonment.
-
(Applause)
-
Yet, the very next day,
-
a woman was killed in the name of honor,
-
and then another and another.
-
We had impacted legislation,
-
but that wasn't enough.
-
We needed to take the film
and its message to the heartland,
-
to small towns and villages
across the country.
-
You see, for me, cinema can play
a very positive role
-
in changing and molding society
in a positive direction.
-
But how would we get to these places?
-
How would we get to
these small towns and villages?
-
We built a mobile cinema,
-
a truck that would roll through
the length and breadth of the country,
-
that would stop
in small towns and villages.
-
We outfitted it with a large screen
that would light up the night sky,
-
and we called it "Look But With Love."
-
It would give the community
an opportunity to come together
-
and watch films in the evening.
-
We knew we could attract men and children
in the mobile cinema.
-
They would come out and watch.
-
But what about women?
-
In these small, rural communities
that are segregated,
-
how would we get women to come out?
-
We had to work with prevailing
cultural norms in order to do so,
-
and so we built a cinema
inside the cinema,
-
outfitting it with seats and a screen
where women could go inside and watch
-
without fearing
-
or being embarrassed
-
or harassment.
-
We began to introduce everyone
-
to films that opened up their minds
to competing worldviews,
-
encouraging children
to build critical thinking
-
so that they could ask questions.
-
And we expanded our scope
beyond honor killings,
-
talking about income inequality,
-
the environment,
-
talking about ethnic relations,
religious tolerance and compassion.
-
And inside, for women,
-
we showed them films
in which they were heroes, not victims,
-
and we told them how they could navigate
the court system, the police system,
-
educating them about their rights,
-
telling them where they could seek refuge
-
if they were victims of domestic violence,
-
where they could go and get help.
-
We were surprised that we were
welcomed in so many of the places
-
that we went to.
-
Many of the towns had never seen
television or social media,
-
and they were eager
for their children to learn.
-
But there was also pushback and blowback
-
with the ideas that
we were bringing with us.
-
Two members of our mobile
cinema team resigned
-
because of threats from villages.
-
And in one of the villages
that we were screening in,
-
they shut it down
-
and said they didn't want the women
to know about their rights.
-
But on the flip side, in another village
when a screening was shut down,
-
a plainclothes policeman got up
and ordered it back on,
-
and stood by, protecting our team,
-
telling everyone that it was his duty
to expose the young minds
-
to an alternative worldview
and to this content.
-
He was an ordinary hero.
-
But we've come across
so many of these heroes on our journey.
-
In another town, where the men said
that only they could watch
-
and the women had to stay home,
-
a community elder got up,
-
got a group of people together,
had a discussion,
-
and then both men and women
sat down to watch together.
-
We are documenting what we are doing.
-
We talk to people.
-
We adapt.
-
We change the lineup of films.
-
When we show men films
-
that show perpetrators
of violence behind bars,
-
we want to hit home the fact
that if men are violent,
-
there will be repercussions.
-
But we also show films where men
are seen as championing women,
-
because we want to encourage them
to take on those roles.
-
For women, when we show them films
in which they are heads of state
-
or where they are lawyers
and doctors and in leadership positions,
-
we talk to them and encourage them
to step into those roles.
-
We are changing the way
people in these villages interact,
-
and we're taking our learnings
into other places.
-
Recently, a group contacted us
and wants to take our mobile cinema
-
to Bangladesh and Syria,
-
and we're sharing our learnings with them.
-
We feel it's really important
-
to take what we are doing
and spread it across the world.
-
In small towns and villages
across Pakistan,
-
men are changing the way
they interact with women,
-
children are changing
the way they see the world,
-
one village at a time, through cinema.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)