Hennaed hands lead up to an acid-burn victim’s disfigured face. Matter-of-factly, she narrates how her husband attacked her with acid while she was asleep. The trailer to Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Daniel Junge’s Saving Face begins with the words, “There are over 100 acid attacks reported in Pakistan every year. Many more go unreported.” The excerpts that follow show different victims recount the cruelty they have suffered. It’s disturbing, bone-chilling and a true description of a brutal vice that exists in Pakistani society today. It’s what has won Saving Face an Oscar award nomination for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

As co-director of Saving Face, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy is the first Pakistani to ever be nominated for the Oscars. Prior to this, she’s won a plethora of prestigious awards during her ten-year long career, including an Emmy in 2010. Savvy, intuitive and deeply passionate about her work, her ‘friends’ span a wide network of international journalists and documenters. Recently she collaborated with British journalist Peter Oborne to nominate Abdul Sattar Edhi for the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, she teaches aspiring media students in a local institute (Karachi based Szabist) when she isn’t shuttling about the world filming documentaries.

I meet up with Sharmeen a week before she is scheduled to leave for the Oscars’ ceremony. The passage leading to her office is bordered with framed posters of her various documentaries. Women of the Holy Kingdom, her investigative piece on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia; Afghanistan Unveiled, her expose on women’s lives in Afghanistan post the U.S. invasion; the Emmy-award winning Pakistan’s Taliban Generation; her latest work, Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret and, of course, Saving Face. These walls showcase some of Sharmeen’s most hard-hitting works.

Further down the passage, a life-size cut out of Quaid-e-Azam stands in a room. I am told that this is the office of the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP), Sharmeen’s ‘other’ obsession aside from documentary filmmaking. Co-founded by Sharmeen, CAP focuses on preserving Pakistan’s historical heritage and creating awareness about it amongst the youth.
This house, converted into a two-storied office, is from where Sharmeen works on her relentless mission to tell the truth – whether it is by recounting the present through documentaries or digging at the past via CAP. And for the past couple of weeks, ever since Saving Face’s Oscar nomination, the entire building has been buzzing with excitement. “My staff and I were all crowded together in front of a computer when we found out that Saving Face had been nominated,” Sharmeen remembers fondly. “We were all ecstatic.”

I ask her if she’s written her speech yet and she says she hasn’t. “Right now, I am just enjoying the feeling of being nominated,” she says. “I think I’ll write my speech with my Saving Face co-director Daniel Junge once I am in L.A.”

Designer magic for the Oscars

What Sharmeen has done, though, is decide on which designers she’ll be wearing at the various Oscar events – a tough task considering that the entire fashion fraternity has besieged her with their particular designs ever since the announcement of her nomination. At the Oscar nominee’s luncheon earlier this month, she wore silk tunic and trousers by Sania Maskatiya. For the Oscars, she has selected an outfit by Bunto Kazmi with jewellery by Kiran Fine Jewellery while at the Oscars after-party she has opted for a Sana Safinaz creation and jewellery by Sherezad Rahimtoola. “I’ve selected a mix of designers because I want to represent the variant fashion aesthetics in Pakistan,” she explains. “Bunto’s clothes are elegant and traditional while Sana and Safinaz are superb at merging Eastern elements with the West. I realize the importance of standing in for my country on a major international platform like the Oscars.”

And does she follow designer-wear in her daily life? “Not really. But these are the Oscars!” she laughs. What interests Sharmeen much, much more is telling investigative, powerful, candid stories through her documentaries. The awards, nominations – and breathtaking designer wear - have always just followed suit.

Baring the truth

“I film documentaries on topics that make me angry or touch me and compel me to tell the truth,” says Sharmeen. “I was in college in the U.S. when 9/11 took place. The media hype and controversies that followed made me want to bridge the gap between the East and the Western world. I had always been interested in investigative journalism and film just seemed like the most effective medium.”

In her first documentary she focused on the lives of Afghani refugee children following the U.S. attacks. “I hadn’t gotten any training in filming documentaries,” she says. “I learnt everything on the field. I hired an old PTV cameraman who had never shot a documentary before but who was able to follow my instructions.”

From thereon, she continued with filming injustices all over the world, often blatantly attacking corrupt establishments and governments. Her most recent work, Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret, has her delving into the lives of Pakistan’s transgender community. “I found them to be such warm, compassionate people. They welcomed me into their homes and proceeded to change all my preconceived notions of them,” she smiles.

It is sad that Sharmeen’s work hasn’t yet been broadcast in Pakistan. The documentaries are commissioned by foreign channels and it is expensive for Pakistani channels to buy them for local viewing. “We are considering putting up Saving Face in cinemas,” she says. “A lot of times the people I interview don’t want the films to be aired locally. They are revealing some very private stories to me and they don’t want people they know to see them. That being said, I’d still like some of my work to be shown in Pakistan, just in order to create awareness. I like it when I manage to ruffle a few feathers. It means that I am doing my job well. In Pakistan, we’re too afraid of speaking out, of ruffling feathers.”

Sharmeen, in contrast, isn’t afraid and has never been. When she was in her teens, she wrote an article for a local newspaper, investigating into the illegal activities of rich landlords’ sons. The next morning, her father returned home and told her that profanities had been spray painted about her on the neighborhood walls. “He said that if I was determined to tell the truth, he would support me in my work. Instead of making me scared, the graffiti made me all the more determined to speak my mind.”

The topics she chooses for her documentaries reflect her determination. In 2005’s Women of the Holy Kingdom she tackled the contentious topic of the Saudi Arabian religious police and women’s rights. 2006 saw her taking on the Catholic Church in the Philippines in City of Guilt. In The New Apartheid she investigates xenophobia in South Africa. “I’ve had people telling me that I shouldn’t cover a certain topic, because it is dangerous or controversial. But nobody has ever said that I’ve portrayed a story incorrectly, because I’ve always been honest in my work,” she says.

With a resolve to cover the nitty-gritty realities, Sharmeen has often ventured into the seedy areas just with a camera-man and an additional crew member in tow. “I sometimes spend weeks spending time with the people that I eventually interview. Since they are revealing sensitive, painful parts of their lives to me, it takes some time for me to befriend them and win over their trust. It’s only then that I film them.” Considering that her career often leads her into hazardous territories, does she feel that she is at a disadvantage since she’s a woman? “To the contrary, I’ve always felt that it’s an advantage that I am a woman,” she reveals. “As a woman, I can sit amongst other women and befriend them and also talk to men. If I had been a man, half the world would have been shut out on me!”

Nor does she feel that she has ever faced any disadvantages in the Western world because she is a Pakistani and a Muslim. “Even if prejudice had ever been there, I never let it affect me,” she explains. “I prefer to concentrate instead on rising above it and proving people wrong.”

Here come the Oscars

And if anybody had ever fostered prejudices against Sharmeen, she’s certainly proved them wrong. Her first documentary won her the Overseas Press Club Award in New York and the accolades have continued ever since. Her most prestigious award to date is the Emmy, although the award brings back bittersweet feelings for her.

“I was in between flights, heading for the Emmy awards ceremony when I got a phone call that my father had died,” recalls Sharmeen. “I immediately returned home. It was surreal because just a few days before he died he told me I had won the Emmy. I told him that the awards were yet to take place but he said that he knew I’d won. Now, I had actually won but he was not around to share my success with me.”

Sharmeen had planned on meeting up with documentary filmmaker Daniel Junge after the Emmy awards ceremony. The meeting got postponed to a later date and eventually resulted in Saving Face. “Daniel told me about London-based Pakistani surgeon Dr Muhammed Jawad’s quest to perform reconstructive plastic surgery on Pakistani acid victims. The topic immediately gripped me and I agreed to collaborate with Daniel.”

Daniel flew down to Pakistan for the initial filmmaking and Sharmeen continued on with the work once he had left. “We would constantly be in touch, making lists, sharing comments,” she says. “For the final editing process, I flew up to L.A. Both Daniel and I brought two very disparate skill sets together to create Saving Face. It was a good partnership; we were both very comfortable with each other’s style of filmmaking and that’s one of the reasons why the documentary worked.”
Had Sharmeen expected the movie to win her an Oscar nomination? “I had never thought about it,” she explains. “I just film my documentaries in the most honest way I can without pondering over whether they’ll be a success or win me awards.”
Documenting injustices all over the world can be a depressing job but Sharmeen prefers to look at things rationally. “There is so much cruelty in the world and filming truthful documentaries is my way of helping the people who suffer. It is hard not to get dejected sometimes and there have been times when I have tried to help people when it has been within my capacity,” she reveals.

“On days that are particularly harrowing, my husband has a knack for cheering me up. My 18-month old daughter brings me joy in only the way children can. I have inherited a passion for cooking from my grandmother, renowned cook Mrs Azra Syed, and spending time in the kitchen is always therapeutic for me. Filming documentaries may be an unnerving profession but luckily, I am a very positive person.”

Does her innate positivity make her feel optimistic about winning at the Oscars? “Right now, I am just anxious to get there,” she mulls. “Once I am there, of course I will want to cross the threshold and win the award. I am excited to walk the red carpet on Oscar night with my husband. I am eager to represent my country to the whole world in the most favorable way possible. And I am hopeful that Pakistanis will wake up early on the morning of February 27 to watch their country become a part for the first time in the world’s most prestigious entertainment awards.”

Pakistan certainly will be watching – and praying – for Sharmeen. It would be fabulous if she won the award. But as far as we’re concerned, she’s a winner already.