As time passes on, new Ms. Marvel episodes are released and unfold some of the interesting reality that no one expected. The show continues to showcase the positive representation of Muslims and in the recent episode, you get to see Karachi as well.
In the latest episode, another Pakistani veteran actress takes charge and explains to Kamala a real history behind the partition that grabbed everyone’s attention.
In the fourth episode, Kamala landed in Karachi to meet her grandmother, Sana played by Samina Ahmed. She narrated the events of partition while detailing the story of Kamala’s ancestors, one of whom is revealed to be Fawad Khan.
Her authentic narration of the partition no doubt, took the internet to next level when she said “My passport is Pakistani, my roots are in India.
And in between all of this, there is a border marked with blood and pain. People are claiming their identity based on an idea some English man had.”
In that, the director Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy Pakistan’s first-ever Oscar-winning filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy shared her views on depicting partition in ‘Ms. Marvel. Because the day the fourth episode was released and this particular scene came out everyone has gone bananas.
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy on partition scene
For Chinoy, the partition is a subject near and dear to her. “I’ve been creating films and telling stories from around the world about women who have extraordinary abilities like working in healthcare and education and climate change in their communities,” she told POPSUGAR about her latest venture. “And I just think of them as superheroes without capes.”
She continued to explain Kamala’s relationship with Sana in episode four and she also shared her delightful experience as well. “The relationship between Kamala and her grandmother is so special. I’ve grown up with that exact same storytelling with my own grandmother,”
The filmmaker added how she drew narrative from her own personal experience with her grandmother. “Partition and the 1947 story is so ingrained in all of our lives. It’s this big historical moment that we read about in our textbooks, but we’ve never seen it picturized in the manner that we are doing it in Ms. Marvel.”
She further explained, “Their identities are fractured because a part of them grew up in another country that they no longer have a connection to. And Kamala’s generation does not have that same connection because they don’t see that world.”
Marvel’s trust
Sharmeen further stated regarding her working experience with Marvel. “They [Marvel] have trusted the entire team.” She added, “Because Marvel brought so many authentic storytellers through the mix, not just in front of the camera, but also behind the camera and everyone who worked on location, through design, through costumes, [they] drew from their experiences that were very diverse. It really shows because this story is being told in the most authentic way that it could have been told.”
She then commented, “They were very supportive of telling the story in the manner that it deserves to be told.” Chinoy also knew exactly how she wanted the scene to play out, and it’s what ended up on the screen.
“She is walking on the platform. And there are these snatches of conversation that are taking her right back into that time period so that [viewers] can feel the anguish that people were feeling, the uncertainty they were feeling, and what the mood was,” she remarked.
‘I wanted to shoot it anyway’ – Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
Emmy award winner further said, “I wanted to take audiences into that as if they could understand what the father and son, the mother and the daughter, the two friends hugging [are going through]. And I wanted to shoot it in a way where Kamala is walking and watching and the camera is going around and going around all of these conversations that then ends with her wanting to actually see what else is going on.”
The Emmy-winning director relayed, “I love to throw myself in there. I love the challenge. I love the fact that we were going to a brand-new country and that I had to rebuild the world. It did kick my ass, I have to say. I was working all the time. I loved it though.”
Sharmeen went on in sharing some more information regarding Sana and Kamala’s equation in the show. “I wanted it to be that Kamala’s grandmother is quirky and she’s eccentric, and Kamala’s inherited part of that quirkiness and eccentricity. Her mother, on the other hand, seems to have skipped the generation.”
She went on, “Kamala can just be a normal teenager.” Talking about Kamala’s storyline with Bruno and Kamran, Chinoy quipped, “And so they go to the beach together and they have this funny sort of banter that’s going back and forth. She found an ally for the first time who really understood her, which is very different from what her relationship had been with Bruno or Kamran.”
In her earlier interview, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy shared her wholesome experience of directing Ms. Marvel.
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