Award-winning writer Umera Ahmad — known for the popular television shows Zindagi Gulzar Hai, Doraha, Durre Shahwar, and the Saba Qamar-starrer part-biographical Baaghi — had her first Indian outing at the ongoing 14th Dubai International Film Festival (Diff).
The film, 5 Rupya, premiered at Diff on Saturday, which is directed by Piyush Chandrakant Panjuani, a noted ad filmmaker from India. 5 Rupya is a joint production with Poland for World Cinema, and was shot extensively in Jammu and Kashmir.
The screenplay is based on Premchand’s short story, Eid Gaah, and tells a simple tale of Ameena (played by Shabana Azmi), a poor old woman who has saved a five-rupee coin to gift to her grandson, the seven-year-old Hamid (Yohaan Bimal Panjuani), as ‘Eidi’.
When the film opens, it is the last day of Ramadan, and Hamid is eagerly waiting for the maghrib prayers when he will break ohis fast and claim his Eid gift. Unfortunately, the coin is lost, and this triggers a series of unexpected incidents that reveal some important truths about the characters in the film.
This isn’t the first time that a Pakistani writer has crossed over to Bollywood. Earlier, Dhoop Kinare-famed Hasina Moin was famously invited by the late Raj Kapoor, in the year 1988, to pen dialogues for his pet project Henna. More recently, Syed Mohammad Ahmad, another popular playwright, scripted dialogues for the satirical comedy, Tere Bin Laden (2010), which also marked the debut of Ali Zafar.
