Karachi Sky
ABOUT
Quratulain, known to her friends and fans as Annie, was a Pakistani television personality from the dusty seaside metropolis of Karachi. Visiting one summer to work in New York, we met on the set of a music video I was directing, and, totally smitten, I soon followed her back.
We learned and grew together. She became a US citizen. But as much as our pursuits overlapped, our work increasingly separated us. One winter, she wrote an essay titled "Karachi Sky", about the city that she had left behind. When I read it I knew she had to go back. At first we tried to make the long distance work. But after seven years together, we divorced. Our lives and work remained intertwined, however, and things seemed to going well when she signed a book deal with a major publishing house.
"Sita Under the Crescent Moon", her spiritual travelogue, follows Annie’s journey across Pakistan documenting Sufi shrines run by women, whose lives she wrote about with incredible sensitivity and compassion. But as she delved deeper into the struggles and traumas, Annie drifted, often falling out of touch.
Then one day, she stacked all the books in her Karachi apartment and set them on fire. This tragic event is the starting point of the film, unspooling her story and celebrating her life through videos, audio messages and the writing she left behind.
Sofian is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and founder of Capital K Pictures. He directed, produced and shot THE INTERPRETERS, a feature-length documentary following Afghan and Iraqi interpreters being targeted for their work helping American forces that made its broadcast premiere on the 2019 season of PBS Independent Lens. His episode of the PBS American Masters series IN THE MAKING (2021), co-directed with Joseph Patel, received a Webby Award and an NAACP Image nomination. In 2022, Sofian directed an episode of the new series TAKEOUT WITH LISA LING on HBOMax and produced AN ACT OF WORSHIP under the Capital K Pictures banner, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and broadcasted on PBS' POV series. He was one of DOCNYC’s 40 Under 40 in 2019 and a Sundance Producing Fellow in 2019-2020. His short work has appeared on Field of Vision, The Atlantic, TOPIC, Al Jazeera and NBC Digital.
Faisal is an award-winning film editor and screenwriter best known for the Oscar-nominated documentary short St. Louis Superman; Brooklyn Film Festival Grand Prize Winner Without Shepherds; and Salar, which won Best Dramatic Short at the Austin Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. In 2016, Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Faisal immigrated to the US at age 15, graduated magna cum laude from UC Berkeley, and moved to NYC to begin a career in film. Over the past decade, he has worked with National Geographic, Dan Rather Reports, USA Network, Al Jazeera, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and Washington Post. His work has been featured at Sundance, Tribeca, Clermont-Ferrand, Big Sky, Palm Springs, Slamdance, and BFI London.
Faisal is an award-winning film editor and screenwriter best known for the Oscar-nominated documentary short St. Louis Superman; Brooklyn Film Festival Grand Prize Winner Without Shepherds; and Salar, which won Best Dramatic Short at the Austin Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. In 2016, Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Faisal immigrated to the US at age 15, graduated magna cum laude from UC Berkeley, and moved to NYC to begin a career in film. Over the past decade, he has worked with National Geographic, Dan Rather Reports, USA Network, Al Jazeera, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and Washington Post. His work has been featured at Sundance, Tribeca, Clermont-Ferrand, Big Sky, Palm Springs, Slamdance, and BFI London.