Pakistani film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s first animated film for Netflix, titled Sitara: Let Girls Dream, was a mesmerizing short film, which once again creates discussion about child-marriage and the age of consent.
The fifteen-minute long silent film has no dialogues, but features some very heart-wrenching background score.
The story focuses on one particular family in Pakistan, which has two daughters and a son. Among the two daughters, the eldest is married off before the end of the film, and it is very apparent that no consent was asked from her at any point by the father.
However, please do not be misled by my two-sentence summary of the film. I am not going into more details because, in these times of social distancing and quarantine, spending 15 minutes to watch Sitara will definitely “not” be a waste of your valuable time.
In fact, I can confidently say that by the end of the film you will be left with a deep reflection-filled moment, where you will wonder at the unfortunate fate of all those girls, whose families marry them off without even asking the girl in question.
Look out for the animation quality, which is very rich.
I also watched a short documentary on the making of this film, and I got to know that the small team spent some sleepless nights to develop this gem. They also had to deal with the frequent trouble of load-shedding (power outage for hours) while editing the film.
The short audio-visual (AV) on the making of the film can be found here.
Most importantly, I request you all to pause and rewind constantly to note the facial expressions of each character in the short film. I reiterate again that this is a silent film with no dialogues, but just music. Yet, the entire story is beautifully narrated through the expressions drawn on each character’s face as the story progresses.
I congratulate Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who is the first Pakistani film-maker to win two Academy Awards, for making this gem. I will definitely look at her past works, and will gladly look forward to her future ones. I highly recommend “Sitara” as a must watch short film for people of all ages.
