Daughter (Dukhtar)
Where: Cineplex Odeon
When: Today, 1 p.m.
Rating: 3/5 stars
Pakistani filmmaker Afia Nathaniel tackles a difficult subject — child marriages — with admirable restraint in her impressive feature debut, as emotionally involving as it is visually spectacular. With delicacy and candor, she chronicles the harrowing journey of Allah Rakhi (Samiya Mumtaz), an illiterate young Muslim mother, across the mountains of Pakistan with her naive and feisty 10-year-old daughter Zainab (Saleha Aref) after learning that Allah’s elderly husband has offered their daughter’s hand in marriage to settle a score with a sadistic, war-mongering rival six times the child’s age. While it seems ill-advised for mother and daughter to be wearing colourful costumes during their flight to freedom, their adventure is captivating enough to let us overlook such oddities. The film’s pacing is uneven, with early scenes of nail-biting tension soon giving way to a more unhurried narrative as the villainous pursuers fade into the background for a spell. Nathaniel makes good use of the scenic beauty and effectively soft-peddles the (lack of) women’s rights as a talking point, letting the action speak for itself.
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