AFI Film Review: 'What Will People Say' Takes Faith To Task For Its Torture of Women

AFI Festival 2017: Iram Haq's AFI Fest Audience Winner for “New Auteurs” demonstrates a voice whose work doesn't speak – it shouts. Right up there in familial intensity with some of Asghar Farhadi's films, Haq's story demands theological reflection and critique. Castigating an entire faith and culture is bold, but that never stops Haq from sharing her viewpoint on the horrors of both. “What Will People Say” is a suffocating drama of violence, rejection and enforced life bondage from those meant to love. Led by a staggering breakthrough performance from Maria Mozdah, Haq's brutal “coming of age” tale reveals oppression at its bleakest.

Mozdah plays Nisha, a teenage Pakistani girl whose family immigrated to Norway for a better life and education. Given her upbringing, it seems normal that her parents might be a tad strict regarding curfew, boys and dress attire. It soon becomes clear that “strict” is putting it tepidly. After being caught in her room with a male classmate, Nisha's father, Mirza (Adil Hussein), beats the boy mercilessly and threatens Nisha's life. Nisha is then placed in a halfway house under the protection of Social Services. Rightfully fearing her livelihood is in danger, the social workers forbid Nisha from making unsupervised contact with her parents until a full evaluation can be made. Haq imbues every proceeding thereafter with chilling suspense, amplifying a constant sensation of anxiety for both character and audience.



What follows is a “you-won't-believe-it-until-you-see-it” kidnapping that sends Nisha back to her family's homeland of Pakistan. Against her will, Nisha's forced to embrace the bare-bones existence of her ancestral past as punishment for daring to assimilate. Although Pakistan is a stunning country to behold, it does not offer much in the way of freedom. This is especially being a woman, as Nisha soon realizes that biologically normal urges and desires are shameful taboo. Every time happiness blooms or she's able to make a connection, she's brutally reminded of her entrapment.

Mozdah is an actress who inspires courage yet exemplifies interior fear so profoundly. The inner struggle of making one's parents proud and still respecting your own happiness is conveyed masterfully. Hussein additionally supplies heartbreaking realism in depicting a father who must live up to his culture's ideas of paternal masculinity, no matter the cost. Despite despising Mirza for tormenting Nisha to degrees even Hell couldn't compete with, a flicker of humanity crops up now and again to remind us that suffering even encompasses the tyrants. More so than “The Big Sick” from earlier this year, a Pakistani family's uncompromising devoutness to Islam corrodes the sacred bond of unconditional love.



Haq's film isn't as simplified as “anti-religion.” It takes no issue with tradition, merely the overarching consequence of denying one's potential. Nisha is unable to choose, experience, or educate herself in any form without the approval of her parents. They must in turn abide by the governing principles instilled in them. This boils down to an endless, viscous cycle made worse when relocated to an environment guaranteed to culturally clash. In Norway, Nisha has the means to take life by the reins and forge her own journey of womanhood.

Haq views Nisha as having her beautiful transition from girl to able-bodied adult woman tainted before it can even blossom. There is no one, parent or otherwise, who should ever have the authority to thwart this evolution. Haq's vision is brutal, unapologetic, and necessarily painful. Haq's masterpiece is a cry of the anger and unimaginable hurt caused by restricting a woman's right to simply “be.”

"What Will People Say" made its North American premiere at AFI Fest 2017 in the "New Auteurs" program. 

GRADE: (★★★★)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8_dBOzufWQ

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