Iram Parveen Bilal / Pakistan – US
About Iram Parveen Bilal
Raised in Nigeria and Pakistan, Iram Parveen Bilal is a Physics Olympian turned filmmaker. She recently directed her 2nd feature, THE PHD MOVIE: STILL IN GRAD SCHOOL, an adaptation of the 7 million+ followed PhD Comics. Her first feature, JOSH was a 2012 Women in Film awarded, it enjoyed theatrical and ancillary distribution success in multiple territories.
Logline
DUA pirouettes between her love for dance and her roots when her orthodox, estranged grandfather unexpectedly visits from Pakistan; forcing her to question her passion and forcing her father, MAJEED, a Muslim cop in Chicago, to question where his loyalties truly lie.
Synopsis
Majeed is 43, he is an anti drug agent and is single father to his 18 year old daughter Dua, a trained ballet dancer who choreographs for a dance team in the South Asian bubble of Chicago where they live. With the arrival of Majeed’s father, Baba from Pakistan, traditionalism arrives in the peachy family. Dua leaves dancing, and Majeed is reminded of his days in Pakistan when his wife was still alive and faced problems with Babas staunch stands.
At work, Majeed is an honest officer working for the law. When a slight is made at a drug traffic leads going to his mosque, he is at first appalled and wishes to deny it out right but of course doesn’t get in the way of investigation. Instead, he embarks on a private investigation almost to prove himself right, when it rudely points to the possibility of none other than Baba himself, being involved with the drugs!
Director’s Intention
Forbidden steps is the story of a South Asian, Muslim household in America faced with conflict of creative expressionism with the orthodox views of right and wrong in a community weighted down by tradition and the fear of disturbing the status quo. The film actively reveals, challenges and discusses pressing issues of faith, identity, crime and art – issues that are even more relevant in a post 9/11 world.
Iram Parveen Bilal / Pakistan – US
Language: Urdu and English
Budget: 597,310 USD
Company: Parveen Shah Production Proposed Pakistan, US and India Joint Project