Patakha Pictures marks five years of backing Pakistan’s documentary filmmakers | Instep | thenews.pk
Patakha Pictures marks five years of backing Pakistan’s documentary filmmakers
The initiative founded by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy celebrates its milestone while welcoming a new group of women filmmakers through its Claim the Frame programme
atakha Pictures marked its fifth anniversary this month with a gathering in Karachi. The initiative, founded under SOC Films by two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, brought together filmmakers, industry representatives and members of the diplomatic community to mark the occasion and introduce the eight women selected for its 2026 mentorship and funding programme, Claim the Frame.
Since launching in 2022, Patakha Pictures has supported 76 emerging filmmakers, whose works have won more than 22 awards and been screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide. The initiative provides funding, mentorship and practical filmmaking support to help filmmakers tell documentary stories drawn from their own experiences and communities.
“Five years of Patakha Pictures have reaffirmed a fundamental belief: talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” said Obaid-Chinoy, founder of Pata-kha Pictures. She credited the initiative’s partnerships with the British Council Pakistan and the Scottish Documentary Institute with helping women filmmakers access funding, mentorship and creative freedom. Looking ahead, she said, “Our ambition now is to establish Patakha Pictures as a permanent space where the next generation of storytellers can learn and collaborate.”
The anniversary also marked the selection of this year’s Claim the Frame participants, which brings together eight women filmmakers from Punjab, Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan in four creative teams. Their projects cover a range of subjects, from a woman breaking barriers in the male-dominated sport of tent pegging and the link between climate change and child marriage in rural Sindh to the artistic traditions of the Cholistan Desert
and generations of women providing healthcare in the remote Shimshal Valley.
Patakha Pictures runs the five-month programme in partnership with the British Council and the Scottish Documentary Institute. The filmmakers receive production funding, weekly online mentoring and an intensive in-person “Edit Week” in Karachi. The programme also includes workshops on storytelling, camera techniques, editing and other aspects of documentary production. Documentary filmmaker Noe Mendelle, founder of the Scottish Documentary Institute, returned as an international mentor for the fifth time. The other mentors were filmmaker and cinematographer Nadir Siddiqui, nonfiction and animation producer Huma Murad Shah, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Maryam Ishani Thompson, edit mentor Husain Qaizar and sound engineer and producer Sameer Khan.
For Laila Jamil, Arts Director at the British Council Pakistan, the programme’s significance lies in creating opportunities for filmmakers whose stories might otherwise struggle to find an audience. “Pakistan has no shortage of talent or stories worth sharing; what matters is creating the space, support and oppor-tunities for more voices to be heard,” she said, adding that the partnership also helped build connections between Pakistan and the UK through film.
Over five years, Patakha Pictures has grown from a mentorship project into a larger community of storytellers. Its focus on supporting women filmmakers addresses a cont-inuing challenge in Pakistan’s film sector, where funding, profess-ional guidance and opportunities to develop independent docu-mentary projects remain difficult to secure. The celebration in Karachi was attended by Ayeza Khan, Sana Javed, Sanam Saeed, Momal Sheikh, Ali Khan, Erica Robin, Amna Ilyas, Adnan Malik, Tapu Javeri, Amean J. and Sania Maskatiya.
Looking ahead, Patakha Pictures aims to establish a permanent space where emerging filmmakers can develop their skills and bring diverse stories from across Pakistan to wider audiences.
