This vibrant and clamorous film shines its lens on contemporary Pakistan, and more importantly, its women, as they prepare for the multi-city Women’s March in 2019,” remarked the jury in a statement from Reel Asian. “From striking images of 10,000 protesters in the streets of Karachi, to intimate portraits of young women organizing in living rooms and on roof tops, This Stained Dawn is a reminder that the fight for gender equality is relentless, universal, and far from over.
The footage she captured evolved into This Stained Dawn, a documentary that captures the full gauntlet of emotions that come with a grassroots organization—the frustration, exhaustion, and even the elation that comes from camaraderie. Abbas’ physical and emotional closeness to these women acts as a magnifying glass, showing us just how hard, and terrifying it can be to fight for women’s rights in a patriarchal society.
Abbas observes of the tendency among some on the Pakistani right to regard the marchers as tools of western propaganda.
The director also realised that the visual history of Pakistani feminism had not been properly archived or celebrated. She was keen to “situate this particular movement within a history of feminist resistance” in Pakistan. In the documentary, there is startling footage from a press conference at which the Aurat marchers are berated by male Pakistani journalists ostensibly there to cover their event in an impartial fashion.
At the same time, Abbas also focuses on the frustrations and the struggles of political organizing, as the leaders of the group have to face uncountable issues in order to make the March happen, from errors of the people working for the march, to the police trying to get the names of the leaders of the movement, to another march that happens at the same time as theirs with the exact opposite purpose, and the inevitable violence that ensues.
