Imran Mir is one of a new breed of filmmakers in the UAE looking to make a career from directing and sees plenty of opportunities in the UAE, particularly in terms of ideas for subject matter.
The filmmaker, who currently works in a bank during the day but aims to become a full-time director, made a name for himself with his first documentary, Beyond Boundaries. The film focuses on Indians and Pakistanis living and working together in Dubai and was shown at a number of film festivals in India, Pakistan and Indonesia last year. It performed well, scooping second place at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) International Film Festival and a silver award at the World Humanitarian Awards in Jakarta. Mir is now planning to make the film available to the wider public, probably on an online streaming site.
So what gave Mir the idea for the documentary? The director said he had already made a few short films and music videos before making Beyond Boundaries, and was actively looking for ideas for a documentary. “I wanted to take it a step further. I was looking for a subject, and the concept of Indians and Pakistanis living in the same apartment – which I saw was quite commonplace in the UAE – really intrigued me. Back in our home countries it is considered normal to completely hate each other, but here for cost cutting we share the same flat, living room and kitchen. Furthermore, many Indians and Pakistanis here are good friends.”
As he started discussing the idea with different people, Mir came across more and more examples of this trend, including an Indian man married to a Pakistani woman and a Pakistani fashion designer who makes clothes for Indian fashion models. “As and when I met more subjects I felt like this subject had the potential to be a documentary, and so that’s what I decided to do.”
When he started work on the film, some people were sceptical, so deep is the rift between the two countries, but Mir was adamant that the film would strike a chord with viewers.
Once Mir had selected the people he wanted to interview for the documentary he arranged a cinematographer to shoot the interviews over a period of four weekends on a Canon 5D. Sound was mostly captured on a Rode Video Pro mic attached to the Canon. “We did a recce first and selected the subjects. It was not scripted although we had a story board as to what we were looking for, but once the lights were on and the camera was on it was just them [the subjects] speaking about their stories.”
Recording the interviews and the subjects going about their everyday lives was relatively straightforward, particularly as Mir had planned well ahead with questions and a storyboard. However, the postproduction stage proved more challenging.
Mir worked with a professional editor, Mark Mathew Stanley, to create a rough edit. He then worked with a friend, Frank Dullaghan, to collaborate with the script and do the narration. But at this stage, the pair hit something of a roadblock. It proved difficult to find the right kind of narrative arch for the film. “We didn’t know how to thread it together. I went back and saw all of the rough clips and everything,” Mir says.
This process led him to think more deeply about the roots of the current animosity between India and Pakistan. A narrative idea then started to form: Indians and Pakistanis had once been one people, but then the partition in 1947 split them up. But after this, people who migrated from both countries to various locations around the world found themselves living together once again – and Dubai was just one example. With this idea in mind, Mir gathered some stock footage, including archive footage of the partition to set the context for the documentary. “We wanted to show a universe, to show humanity, to show how people were together. They were separated and yet after that some people looked beyond boundaries. They were not confined within the walls of separation, and Dubai is a fine example,” Mir said.
With this decided, the rest of the postproduction process became much easier. Mir sat with the editor and finalised the edit. The editing, which was completed using Final Cut Pro, took about six weeks in total. After this, Mir worked on the trailer and poster, which took another three months.
With the film having now completed its run at festivals, Mir is pleased with the way it has been received. “The experience was absolutely fantastic,” he says. “This actually gave me a lot of confidence as a filmmaker and it taught me how honest you need to be as a filmmaker.”
Looking ahead, Mir has no shortage of ideas for future film and TV projects. He is working on ideas for a reality style TV show focusing on people who have achieved great things in the UAE, but have fallen below the radar of recognition. “I’m talking about people who have come here and made a name for themselves – not just in terms of wealth, rather people who have made a difference, made some positive change in society,” he says.
About the film
‘Beyond boundaries’ is a documentary about a common cultural heritage and many similarities among Indians and Pakistanis. The film is a tribute to people living in harmony even outside their country and is about people who “forgive the past and look forward with hope”, according to director Imran Mir.
The stars of the movie consists of a vegetable vendor, electronics showroom manager, saloon barber, fashion designer, make-up artist, husband and wife, theatre group and doctor in a mobile clinic. The documentary is about the experiences of these Indians and Pakistanis who co-exist peacefully and live a life ‘Beyond Boundaries’.
Beyond Boundaries gives the viewer a glimpse of the lives of eight expatriates living in a foreign land away from home.
The film has already been shown at five film festivals including Jalem Film Festival in Bangalore. It also participated in the Dada Saheb Phalke awards in India.
