‘This Stained Dawn:’ How Director Anam Abbas Captured a Women’s March and the Broader Feminist Movement in Pakistan

This Stained Dawn follows a group of women in Karachi, Pakistan as they organize a women’s march. They navigate misconceptions in the media, staunch resistance from the radical religious right and other opponents, surveillance, and even physical violence to further grow the blooming feminist movement and usher in a new era for women’s rights in Pakistan. 

Director Anam Abbas knows these organizers well. She is one of them. She considers them close friends, and allies in her own journey as an activist. Abbas took on the role of a quasi-historian for the group, documenting their efforts to plan a 2020 march, often putting away her camera so she could participate in discussions.

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. It is to her credit as a filmmaker that, despite her personal allegiances, Abbas brings a wide variety of perspectives to the piece, which makes the moments of progress we witness even more impressive. While the pandemic disrupted Abbas’ plans to follow the women in the aftermath of the march, the documentary uses animation to provide further context. The result is that This Stained Dawn is a deeply affecting and necessary viewing experience, one that challenges the viewers’ relationship with activism in their own lives.

This Stained Dawn was recently featured as part of the Women’s Voices Now 2022 Film Festival, where it won the Tom Lantos Prize for best human rights documentary film. 

Awards Daily spoke with Abbas about This Stained Dawn—the filmmaking process, the evolving feminist movement in Pakistan that she aimed to capture, and the women at the center of it all.

Awards Daily: Can you tell our readers about This Stained Dawn and how it came about.  

Anam Abbas: Sure. So, the film follows activists who organized a women’s march in Karachi in 2020. It’s a march that happens and has been happening every year since 2018. It happens in multiple cities across Pakistan, but the film follows a particular activist in Karachi who organized it. Karachi is one of the biggest cities in the world, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and it is the most diverse march that happens in the country. I’m involved in the organization, and these are my friends’ organizing, so I was in an insider position to make the film. The intention of making the film was to archive this moment because the marches have become a visible, very controversial event in Pakistan, and it’s changing the conversation about feminism and patriarchy in the country. I began because older feminist movements in the country have not been archived in the same way we can in this day and age, and it was really important for me to be part of that work.

AD: When you initially set out to collect footage, did you intend to make it into a film?

AA: I wanted it to be a film. It was always my job within the group to be documenting because that’s what I do. So I had a lot of footage from previous years already. I was there, moving back to Karachi, I don’t live there, and that’s not my home, but I moved back specifically to film with the activists a few months before the march started.

AD: You mentioned these activists are women you know well; how did you handle that? Were there any times when you felt like you needed to step back and just document rather than participate? How did you handle that aspect?

AA: I mean, it was challenging at times because, of course, I had a lot of trust and unfiltered access, but I had to censor myself at times. I would think, ‘Put the camera down, this is not a moment for the film, this is a moment for us.’ There were times when I also wanted to participate. We’d be having discussions and debates, and I would like to put my two cents in because I was invested in what the march represents. I think the decision-making happens in the edit, so I was keenly aware of who the film was for when that was happening. That dictated a lot of what went into the film.

AD: And how did you make those decisions when it came time to edit? 

AA: Structurally, the film is simple for me. The structure of the film is like a countdown to the march. When I went into it, I always thought the march would be the end of the second act, and then the third act could be us following the backlash and the repercussions of the march. But, in 2020, the pandemic happened, so I stopped filming a week after the march. I filmed from November 2019 to March 2020, and we all had to pack up and go home. Some of the animations that came into the film weren’t planned; they happened because I couldn’t film anymore, and they still had more to say. So there’s this thought, ‘When do you stop filming?’ Because this work never really ends, which formed some of the animations.

AD: As you step back and watch the film, has it given you any new insights into these women you already had such a deep relationship with? Or maybe a fresh perspective?

AA: I think the depth of my connections with some of these people goes beyond the film. There’s so much to them that’s not in the film. I wish I had included more of how amazing they are. But of course, there were restrictions to my resources and what the film allows you to share, etc. I think my love deepens for them every time. Because as complicated as they all are, as human beings, I celebrate their labor and see the best of them.

AD: Earlier, you said that you were keenly aware of who This Stained Dawn was for while making it.  

AA: Yes, my primary audience was for people in Pakistan because the marchers and the activists get a lot of criticism, that they’re just from a tiny segment of society, or that they’re getting financed, or like, I don’t know, the west corrupted the families here, just ridiculous accusations. So for me, making the invisible visible—the actual grassroots, door-to-door work that happens way before the visible march, was necessary, and demystifying what organizing is and who the organizers are was important for Pakistan. 

But of course, because of the pandemic, I haven’t been able to screen it here, which is tragic. I hope that changes soon, because, you know, restrictions are changing. My editor for the film was a Pakistani-Canadian. He helped me sometimes step back and say, ‘Okay, this will be confusing for the international audience; add more context.’ The reality of being a filmmaker in Pakistan, especially a documentary filmmaker or independent filmmaker, is that there is no financing here. And so, to a degree, I have to be international facing with my work because otherwise, I would not be able to make another film.

AD: I’m sorry to hear that people in Pakistan haven’t been able to see the film. What kind of feedback have you gotten from audiences who have seen it. And what kind of feedback do you hope to get from the people of Pakistan when they see the film?

AA: Well, before we ever did our festival premiere abroad, we did an internal screening with activists from all the cities. That was a virtual screening, but it was a nice reunion because it was people from different cities. I think we spoke for two hours after that because many people were targeted after that march. So many people had things to share, hurt, and grievances to air. It became a therapy session for everybody, which is nice. Other than that, I only had one small screening in Lahore, which was a few weeks before this year’s march. The overarching reaction was that they felt great to be seen. As I said, the primary audience was people in Pakistan. 

Really, the primary audience is the activists, and it’s the organizers because they need that encouragement and need to see themselves as heroes. They need to be celebrated and to know that they’re all in this together because you forget when you do the work that grassroots organizing is so labor-intensive. All you get is accusations, externally and internally; it’s difficult when so many people do something together. There’s conflict, and it’s just not easy or sometimes even pleasant work. So I think it’s an opportunity for activists worldwide, not just in Pakistan but everywhere, to see a reflection of themselves and what they do in the film and feel celebrated or maybe renewed hopefully.

AD: I loved the animation in the film.

AA: Yes, a friend of ours, an organizer and artist, did a tarot reading the day before the march because everybody was so intense, and the three cards that we got were the animation. The sequences are very apt to what I also feel about this new movement that needs to grow, and it’s very difficult and painful. In reality, this is something that has already shifted the culture so much. The animations talk about that pain, talk about new beginnings, and that there is something to celebrate in what we do, despite the pain. Despite the endlessness of this world, that’s just the nature of existence. There are the people who will stand up for justice, and that’s always difficult work. I don’t believe that we will reach some utopia. There’s always going to be someone saying, ‘No, this is not okay.’ As human beings, we have a choice about how we choose to exist in our reality.

I want people to see that there are multiple points of view, multiple perspectives, and multiple intentions for people who come into movements like these, and they do not always align, and that’s okay. 

Also, with this film, it is okay to watch it and then critique what you see and critique the movement. I think that’s part of the document that is the film, and it should allow people to do that. 

I made sure I worked with artists involved in the movement, so the animations were made by an artist who has been doing the flagship posters of the march since 2018. So it’s her visual language in the real world and in the film. Also, if you see the film, you see these masks of this woman, she was a social media star, and it was like headline news for a while when she was killed in 2016, but our artist illustrated those masks, and so her imprint is part of the iconography of the march in real life. We collaborated with people in the field to have deep, deep connections to what the movement is and who the movement is.

AD: Were you worried about repercussions or backlash? Did that influence your decision-making?

AA: Our films don’t show on like broadcast or theaters here so even when I do begin my screenings locally, they’re still going to be community screenings, universities, and art and community spaces. There’s a certain amount of safety in real-life screenings anyway because we’re not getting those massive audiences here for our work. 

AD: This Stained Dawn was part of this year’s Woman’s Voices Now Film Festival and was awarded the Tom Lantos Prize for Best Human Rights Documentary Film. What does it mean to you to have the film amplified in this way?

AA: It’s cool, and I’m grateful. It’s always exciting to win accolades and be celebrated for your work, but this award is especially for the work you see inside the film, not mine. So that’s even cooler. I hope that I can encourage people to embrace the film in Pakistan and that it will enable me to do more work. That’s always my goal. You know, it’s a very fragile line of work and lifestyle to be a filmmaker, especially here in Pakistan. This is great encouragement to continue.

AD: And what’s next for you?

AA: I also work as a producer, and I just wrapped a horror fiction feature with a great young director that I can hope to release next year. Then I’m writing a fiction series about my first few years after moving to Karachi when I met these activists and my coming into politics. It’s a more lighthearted look at our lives, trying to be artists and trying to find a way to make different interventions in Karachi. 

Learn more about Women’s Voices Now, their mission to use films to drive social change and the film’s featured in this year’s festival—including This Stained Dawn here.