Oscars 2012: 'Saving Face' wins for documentary short Movie
Los
Angeles, Feb 27: Pakistani documentary film "Saving Face", which
uncovers the story of hundreds of people, mostly women who become acid
attack victims, was honoured with the Oscar award for best documentary
(short) at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony here.
Directed by Daniel Junge and Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy,
"Saving Face" follows several survivors, and narrates the tale of their
fight for justice, and a Pakistani plastic surgeon who has returned to
his homeland to help them restore their faces and their lives. Full Movie Saving Face
The film beat "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil
Rights Movement", "God is the bigger Elvis", "Incident in New Baghdad"
and "The Tsunami and The Cherry Blossom" to win the prestigious award.
In the best documentary (feature) category, the Oscar went to
"Undefeated" directed by TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Rich Middlemas.
Watch Movie Video
Every year in Pakistan, many people – the majority of them women –
are known to be victimized by brutal acid attacks, while numerous other
cases go unreported. With little or no access to reconstructive surgery,
survivors are physically and emotionally scarred. Many reported
assailants, typically a husband or someone else close to the victim,
receive minimal punishment from the state.
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Recently honored with a Best Documentary Short Oscar®, SAVING FACE
chronicles the lives of acid-attack survivors Zakia and Rukhsana as they
attempt to bring their assailants to justice and move on with their
lives. The women are supported by NGOs, sympathetic policymakers, and
skilled doctors, such as the Acid Survivors Foundation- Pakistan,
plastic surgeon Dr. Mohammad Jawad, who returns to his home country to
assist them, attorney Ms. Sarkar Abbass who fights Zakia’s case, and
female politician Marvi Memon who advocates for new legislation.Directed
by Oscar® winning and Emmy®-nominated American filmmaker Daniel Junge
and Oscar® and Emmy®-winning Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy,
SAVING FACE is an intimate look inside Pakistani society, illuminating
each women’s personal journey while showing how reformers are tackling
this horrific problem.
SAVING FACE will broadcast internationally in 2012, beginning with HBO in North America on March 8 and Channel Four in the UK.
The filmmakers would like to express our deep gratitude to Zakia and
Rukhsana for bravely telling their stories on film, to our NGO partners
Acid Survivors Trust International, Acid Survivors Foundation-Pakistan
and Islamic Help, and to the countless other men and women dedicating
their time and expertise to the campaign to eradicate acid violence.
“There are always gasps,” says Dr. Mohammad Jawad, discussing audience reactions to Saving Face, this year’s Academy Award-winner for Best Documentary Short.
“We
were so deep in the filming and editing of it that it was surprising to
us to hear the gasps that we hear in screenings,” adds Daniel Junge,
who co-directed the film with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, “but moreover, to
see the tears and how this emotionally affects viewers.”
Saving Face, which premieres on HBO at 8:30 ET tonight, follows Pakistani acid attack
survivors Zakia and Rukhsana as they attempt to rebuild their lives,
and the work of Jawad, a U.K.-based plastic surgeon who returns to his
homeland, to reconstruct their faces. The documentary is at times
visually arresting and downright jarring in capturing the sheer
brutality of acid violence.
The
film begins in a Pakistani hospital burn ward populated all by
women—some missing eyes, their skin burned, and faces flat. Despite the
horror, the film ultimately offers hope and redemption, as Zakia and
Rukshana slowly move forward with their lives: Zakia’s attacker is given
two life sentences in jail, the Pakistani parliament unanimously passes
a bill to criminalize acid throwing, and Rukhsana is joyful at giving
birth to a baby boy.
Obaid-Chinoy,
who dedicated her Oscar to Zakia, Rukhsana, Jawad, and the women of
Pakistan, recalls one of several stories that didn’t make it into the
film, that of Aziz Mai. Mai’s estranged ex-husband threw acid on Mai and
her entire family, including her pregnant daughter and her youngest
child, who was just 5 years old at the time. “That was particularly
gut-wrenching,” she says.
“Each
story is unique, but it’s all a form of domestic abuse,” Junge says of
the stories they encountered during filming, “and it’s all
premeditated.”
HBO Films
Saving Face,
which garnered Pakistan’s first ever Oscar, has brought to
international attention the practice of acid throwing, a unique form of
violence unfamiliar to many across the globe. Acid violence is by no
means limited to Pakistan: attacks occur in Bangladesh, India, Cambodia,
Nepal, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iran, the United Kingdom, and even the United States.
The Acid Survivors Trust International
(ASTI) estimates there are approximately 1,500 acid attacks a year
globally. Putting together accurate figures on acid violence can be
problematic, as acid attacks are thought to be largely underreported,
and numbers vary wildly from NGO to NGO. According to ASTI, 80 percent
of victims are female, and attackers almost always are male (with the
exception of Cambodia, where women attack other women just as often as
men do). Victims are attacked for refusing proposals of love, sex or
marriage, with assaults often fueled by the “if I can’t have her, no one
can” mentality. In other instances attackers throw acid in business or
land disputes. In Liberia, acid was used as a weapon during the
country’s civil war.
“The commonality is that the people who create this crime want to create a social stigma.”
Since 2009, Jawad, an affable and confident man, has been visiting Pakistan to perform surgeries on acid-attack survivors. In Saving Face
we see the emotional toll his work takes on him. “Each case is a
horrible story, and they are so visually disturbing,” he says. Acid
violence, says Jawad, is “a local disease, a man-made disease.”
Dr. Ebby Elahi, an oculoplastic and reconstructive who has worked on numerous acid attack survivors in Cambodia,
Sri Lanka and Liberia, agrees. “Coming at this from a medical
standpoint, we kind of look at everything, especially surgeons, as kind
of ‘see it, fix it,’” he says. “It didn’t take long for me to realize
that this is not really a medical problem. It has medical consequences
[but] this is a social problem, and the response to it has to be
social.”
Acid
attacks occur in different countries for different reasons, but “the
commonality is that the people who create this crime want to create a
social stigma,” says Elahi.
Bangladesh,
once known as the “acid-attack capital of the world,” has been the most
successful in cracking down on acid violence. Whereas in 2002
Bangladesh saw 500 attacks annually, it now sees about 100 per year.
Bangladesh was the first nation to adopt acid-specific legislation, and
acid attacks carry a death sentence.
Obaid-Chinoy and Junge are working with ASTI and the Acid Survivors Foundation
in Pakistan on an anti-acid violence outreach campaign that, as Junge
says, “involves an education and awareness component.” Obaid-Chinoy has
directed two public service announcements to air in Pakistan. “In
Pakistan the outreach strategies will target Southern Punjab and
Northern Sindh,” says John Morrison, founder and chair of ASTI. “There
will be TV, radio and public service broadcasts. Schools, colleges,
NGOs, mosques, local MPs, and community associations will be involved.”
Both
Obaid-Chinoy and Junge are working to screen the film globally, as well
as on their accompanying outreach campaign. “Of course our most
important audience is in Pakistan, and we hope to show the film there,
but first we have to be assured of the women’s safety on the ground,”
says Junge.
Education and awareness are just one part of a multi-faceted approach necessary to crack down on acid violence in Pakistan.
According to Mohammad Khan, executive director of the Acid Survivors
Foundation—Pakistan, the nation’s government needs to adopt a new,
comprehensive acid attack-specific law that, among other things, will:
deal with the length of court cases so they are not dragged out; reduce
corruption among law enforcement involvement; establish a monitoring
system to properly document acid attacks; provide free medical treatment
for victims, and, of course, secure a funding mechanism for the
aforementioned.
Though
a recent amendment to the penal code imposed harsher penalties for acid
attacks, “there are a lot of misconceptions about what has happened
recently in Pakistan in respect of legislation,” says Morrison, “Many
people think that Pakistan has now got a full and comprehensive acid
crime law.” Morrison says adoption of a comprehensive law is the next
most important step, along with securing “accessible and affordable
specialist surgery and burns care.”
Dr.
Jawad plans to visit Pakistan to work on acid attack victims three to
four times a year, and is encouraging colleagues to step up and offer
their services: “Surgeons should register that they are available to
help and travel to these parts of the world. I think that locally, too,
surgeons should also come forward.”
Says
Elahi: “In a lot of these places, the medical training is lacking,
especially with subspecialties. And most importantly, facilities are
lacking.”
According
to Jawad, “One thing is very clear. I cannot take what happens at
Cornell or MIT and take it to Pakistan. That is a stupid idea to even
think about. It’s going to be low-tech but high-impact, not high-tech,
low-impact. I’m aware of the limitations in the society and I’m not
happy about it, but I can be realistic about it.”
Moving
forward, Khan is hopeful that NGOs and civil society can make progress:
“We have a problem and we own it and we’ll fix it.”
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