ISLAMABAD: Pakistani filmmaker Sarmad Khoosat has announced he will release his award-winning film ‘Zindagi Tamasha’ on YouTube and Vimeo today, Friday, after over three years of the film’s release being postponed due to opposition from right-wing factions.

The film, which is about a struggling cleric, has been cleared for release in Pakistan several times, was selected to be the country’s official entry for the 2020 Academy Awards foreign language film category and has won prizes in international festivals. However, the religious political party Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) called the film’s content “blasphemous,” and other right-wing groups also opposed it and threatened protests, causing the government to postpone its release. 

Dispute being originally scheduled for release in 2020, Zindagi Tamasha has still not been screened inside Pakistan.

In a post on his official Facebook page, Khoosat, who has directed and co-produced the film, said he would now release the film online.

“I congratulate you for the month of independence and the Independence day, 14th August, in advance,” he said, referring to the day Pakistan became an independent country.

“I also want to set something free this month [and] what I am setting free, that thing is named, Zindagi Tamasha … We are releasing our much-awaited film Zindagi Tamasha worldwide on our YT & Vimeo channels on 4th August, 2023. It is now yours.”

Written by Nirmal Bano, Arif Hassan, Eman Suleman, Samiya Mumtaz, and Ali Kureshi, Zindagi Tamasha is set in Lahore and chronicles the chaos that ensues in the life of a devout elderly man after a video of him dancing at a wedding goes viral. 

Khoosat says the film was not meant to hurt religious sensitivities but to shed light on growing intolerance in Pakistani society. He says he and his family have received multiple death threats since the trailer release. 

The filmmaker has encountered similar problems in the past as well. 

In November, his production “Joyland” — which won multiple prizes at Cannes and was Pakistan’s entry for the 2023 Oscars — was banned by the Pakistani government for being “clearly repugnant to the norms of decency and morality” of the country. 

The film was later cleared by the national censorship board after edits but remains banned in the Punjab province. The film depicts transgender culture in Pakistan.