Pakistan may not yet be known for great 2D hand-painted animation, but the Riaz cousins plan to change all that, come this year’s world premiere of ‘The Glassworker’ at the prestigious Annecy Festival in June.
Pakistan has become well known in cinematic circles lately, for films which have world premiered in some of the most prestigious festivals in the world. Titles like Joyland by Saim Sadiq (2022, in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard) and the In Flames by Zarrar Kahn (2023, in Director's Fortnight) have gone on to qualify as the country’s Oscar submission for their respective years of release and, in the case of Joyland, the film won the Jury Prize in UCR as well as the Queer Palm prize for best LGBTQ-themed film in that year’s festival.
The upcoming feature The Glassworker by Usman Riaz is no exception. It will world premiere at the next Annecy Festival in early June and is a groundbreaking project which is sure to turn heads and garner global interest.
But what makes The Glassworker different, and stand apart from the other projects mentioned above is that, in case you haven’t already guessed it by the name of the festival where it will world premiere, it is an animated project. In fact, The Glassworker is the first ever 2D hand-drawn animated film from Pakistan.
At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the team behind the film spoke to introduce the project at a cozy press conference inside the American Pavilion.
The Glassworker is a beautiful work of animation, much in the vein of a Studio Ghibli feature, which Riaz credits as inspiration. The film is executive produced by Apoorva Bakshi, the acclaimed producer behind Delhi Crime, and includes an English-language cast of talented actors such as Art Malik (Man Like Mobeen, City of Joy and The Jewel in the Crown), Sacha Dhawan (Wolf), Anjli Mohindra (The Lazarus Project), and Tony Jayawardena (Ackley Bridge).
The film tells the story of young, gifted Vincent and his father Tomas who run the finest glass workshop in the country. Whey find their lives upended by an approaching war in which they want no part, the arrival of an army colonel and his young, aspiring violinist daughter Alliz, puts the father-son relationship to the test. As Vincent and Alliz fall in love, they must find the courage to confront their fathers.
The groundbreaking aspect of The Glassworker doesn’t stop with it being the first 2D hand drawn animated title hailing from Pakistan. It is also a film that has created a movement as Usman found that his home country didn’t possess the infrastructure to make a full length animated film and so instead of going abroad, he founded a studio — Mano Animation Studios — along with his cousin Khizer Riaz.
Usman’s inspiration was actually Studio Ghibli. The producer, filmmaker and artist, a Ted Talks alumni who went to Japan with Ted Seniors, the follow up to the Talks, went to Studio Ghibli creatives for advice and it was during a tour that Shin Hashida, one of the executives at Studio Ghibli, told him to build his own studio, when he heard Usman complained his home country had no facilities. Tongue in cheek, Usman admitted during the chat in Cannes that it may have been to simply get rid of him faster. Regardless of Hashida’s reasonings, Usman and his cousin began to work on building what would later become Mano, a full service animation studio in the heart of Karachi.
Mano Animation Studios has 3 partners, Usman Riaz, who is the co-founder and director, Mariam Paracha, co-founder and art director, along with Khizer Riaz, the Studios’ CEO and producer.
The team compared making a film while also kickstarting an animation studio to “a runaway train, and we were building the tracks while it’s running,” and admitted they would not suggest to any young filmmakers to follow their steps. But the new technique and building their studio literally from the ground up also allowed them a certain freedom. “No studios meant no rules, and no restrictions,” Usman admitted.
The one “restriction” the team felt was in telling their story and making sure that, by setting the film in what someone in the audience called a “white” fantastical environment, they didn’t ruffle any feathers on their home turf. Politics is never a good bedfellow with cinema and in Pakistan, talking about the military could be downright dangerous for the young filmmakers. “We want to make a second film,” the cousins joked, and since the film deals with themes of looming conflict, it’s understandable why they would feel that way, since setting it in Pakistan would make them an easy target.
During the Q&A, an Indian colleague asked the team if the audience existed in Pakistan for such a project — citing the fact that in India, indie animation hasn’t been successful. Such was the case with Gitanjali Rao’s project Bombay Rose which never seemed to find a way of being screened following its 2019 Venice debut.
But the personable and very well spoken Usman answered that streaming has created a large built-in anime audience for films such as The Glassworker and that while the film will at first live in a festival bubble, traveling to Annecy and beyond, it also has distribution in place for Pakistan. Plus “the youngest generation is obsessed with Anime,” as Usman admitted.
The press conference, held inside the AmPav overlooking the sea and the Croisette, was presented by the Pakistan Crescent Collective which represents Pakistan's official presence at the Cannes Film Festival, marking the first time the country has had a central hub. Its mission is to discover and nurture the next generation of talent, preserve film, and promote Pakistani and diaspora films globally, thereby advancing Pakistan's visual culture. The panel was doderated by Mohammed Ali Naqvi who is the Chairman of the Pakistani Academy Selection Committee.
Top image courtesy of Annecy Festival, used with permission.