Two-time Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy recently won an Emmy Award for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, a documentary on honour killings in Pakistan, co-produced by HBO.
The film, which is the journalist-turned-filmmaker’s sixth Emmy-winning feature in a career spanning well over a decade and half, follows the true story of Saba Qaiser, a village girl who was bundled into a bag one night and thrown into a river by her father and uncle to die, because she had eloped with her lover.
While Qaiser survived the attempt, Chinoy says the victims of honour crimes average 1,000 a year in the country.
The film’s narrative is interspersed with her interviews with Qaiser’s jailed culprits, who come across as unrepentant. Barely 40 minutes long, the documentary may not be high on production value but its content is strong enough to register at some of the world’s most prestigious forums and ceremonies.
