Sabiha Sumar facts for kids

Sabiha Sumar (born September 29, 1961) is a filmmaker and producer from Pakistan. She is famous for making independent documentary films. Her work often explores important topics like the roles of women, religion, and power in Pakistani society.

Her most well-known movie is the feature film Khamosh Pani (which means Silent Waters), released in 2003. Along with other filmmakers like Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Sumar is one of the few Pakistani women whose documentaries have been shown to audiences around the world.

Early Life and Education

Sabiha Sumar was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1961. Her parents had moved to Karachi from Bombay (now Mumbai), India, during the partition in 1947. She went to the Karachi Grammar School.

For her higher education, Sumar first studied Persian Literature at the University of Karachi. She then moved to the United States to study Filmmaking and Political Science at Sarah Lawrence College from 1980 to 1983. After that, she earned a post-graduate degree in International Relations from Cambridge University in England.

Career as a Filmmaker

Sabiha Sumar is known for making films that discuss social and political issues. She is especially interested in how women's lives in Pakistan have been shaped by society and history.

Important Documentary Films

In 1992, Sumar started her own film company called Vidhi Films. Her first documentary, Who Will Cast the First Stone?, was about the difficult situations of three women in prison in Pakistan. The film won the Golden Gate Award at a film festival in San Francisco in 1998. It also helped save a woman who had been given a very harsh punishment.

Some of her other important documentaries include:

• Don't Ask Why (1999)
• For a Place Under the Heavens (2003), which started a big discussion about women wearing the hijab (a head covering) in the Muslim world.
• Dinner with the President: A Nation's Journey (2007)

Her films have been shown at international film festivals, universities, and by human rights groups. However, because they deal with difficult topics, they have not been shown widely in Pakistan.

Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters)

Sumar's first feature film, Khamosh Pani, came out in 2003. The movie tells a fictional story about the 1947 partition of India from a woman's point of view. It explores the painful experiences people went through during that time. The film connects the events of the partition to a period in 1979 when Pakistan's government introduced stricter religious laws.

Khamosh Pani was a major success and won fourteen international awards. Sumar won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, which is a very high honor. Because the film's themes were controversial, Sumar organized 41 free screenings across Pakistan so that more people could see it.

Personal Life

Sabiha Sumar has one daughter named Dhiya. She also helped start the Centre for Social Science Research in Karachi to encourage study and research.

Filmography

Awards and Nominations

See also

In Spanish: Sabiha Sumar para niños