ISLAMABAD // Omar Ali Khan – a horror film buff and ice-cream purveyor – had a scary vision: a monster in a burqa. It came from a childhood fear of the all-concealing cloak his grandmother wore in pre-partition India.
Using his Boston film school training, Khan turned his vision into Pakistan’s first feature-length gore flick: Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground), featuring a psychopathic killer disguised in a burqa.
It debuted in Pakistan last year to Rocky Horror Show-type reactions, and won a minor cult following at campus festivals. After struggling with censors, it got a commercial release and screened to sell-out crowds for over 10 weeks.
Now it is preparing to hit India’s big screens, joining a new wave of Pakistani films reciprocating for the first time the cross-border flow of Bollywood productions into Pakistan.
“It’s totally surreal. I never imagined we’d be competing with the likes of Shah Rukh Khan,” said the director.
