Shamoon Abbasi in Durj

By Arubiya Qadir Balouch

Durj – Movie

In times of Covid-19, the film industry around the world has shut down completely, with no theatres, cinema lovers have already turned to the digital world. Durj was a controvertial movie that got released in 2019, where the censorboard of Pakistan chopped off many scenes, however the film critics still got around the choppy scenes and supported the film.  Durj, a controvertial film has been released on a digital platform, Vidly.pk in 2020. The movie stars Shamoon Abassi, Sherry Shah, Maira Khan, Nouman Javed, Dodi Khan and Hafeez Ali. The film is written and directed by Shamoon Abassi.

The story of Durj is about the reality behind a hideous crime of canibalism and the story revolves around a reporter’s wife who dives deep within the depths of despair and darkness to seek the truth of her missing husband.

Durj – Movie

In one of his interviews, Shamoon Abassi, stated, “I think Pakistan needs more reality stories rather than copying films. It’s important to have different film genres come up if you want to develop a new [film] industry.” He further added, “Everyone is doing comedy because it is easier to sell, it is easier to advertise, you get a lot of sponsors. We did not have any sponsors, we did not have any advertiser, we do not have any channel, yet we never gave up, we kept doing whatever we could for this film.”

Doing soemthing out of the box is usually unheard of, as people love to watch romantic films or comedy films, and maing a movie like Durj was something that was tried for the first time in the mainstream cinemas.
Plot Summary – Durj

Durj – Movie

News hits the nation with a bulletin, in 2013  claiming events that connect people living beyond the lines of humanity to survive. And digging graves  These crimes were hideous in nature and the entire nation was disgusted about the event and wanted justice to prevail, and later the responsible people were caught by the law but surprisingly it turned out that there was no real punishment for this sort of crime at the time.  This crime being Cannibalism (eating human flesh to settle one’s starving needs) never occurred to the legislators that anyone would do such an inhumane act and hence there was no law within the country’s constitution to punish that. So as disturbing as it sounds, the perpetrator wasn’t charged and was set free without any major consequences. and never ever monitored by the authorities, which allowed these criminals to continue committing these crimes.

Durj – Movie

Durj unfolds through the main antagonist GULL who have been released after spending some time in the jail for having digged graves and consumed bodies of freshly expired people. He finds his love in LAALI a small town thief who has no one, he promises her that he will be his guardian and will feed him. She follows GULL and finds out that he is a cannibal, she confronts him but she has no way back.
This is a must watch for movie lovers, as its a different topic and something that is intriguing and is a first for Pakistan’s cinema.