To say that Hamza Ali Abbasi has had a stellar year would be anunderstatement. With Main Hoon Shahid Afridi (MHSA) and Waar doing majorbusiness at the box office, Pyarey Afzal and various endorsement deals makinghim a recurring face on our television screens and now with his directorialdebut looking at a mid-September release date, his star is not on the rise — ithas arrived.
But sorry to disappoint you, Ehtesham fans. Abbasi’s character in Waar is
well and truly dead and he will not be making a surprise appearance in the
sequel as the long-lost twin brother of the wisecracking, impertinent police
officer we all loved. Fret not though, for he will be returning to screens at a
cinema near us soon. He’ll just be a tad unrecognisable when he does.
“People expect you to be a hero,” he said, “You’re young, you look a
certain way and people perceive you a certain way, and you end up being
typecast. I don’t want that. Being a hero doesn’t involve a lot of acting. I
love a challenging role because I’m not a hero — I’m an actor. In Kambakht, I
deliberately play an ugly, crude character.”
The film poster featuring Hamza’s
character
With Kambakht, Abbasi’s debut as a feature film director, he is consciously
seeking to break away from being a run-of-the-mill leading man. While his fans
love seeing him on their television screens, he is looking to return to his
first love — directing. What his fans may not know is that his breakout role in
Waar came about completely by accident, as he had initially joined the project
as an Assistant Director to Bilal Lashari. His starring role in Kambakht was
also not part of the initial plan. A scheduling conflict forced Ahsan Khan to
drop out of the lead role, forcing Abbasi to step in at the last minute. Abbasi
concurs that he had a bit too much on his plate with this one, but he’s learnt
his lesson the first time round.
The film project is the first step in a directorial journey that the actor
hopes to culminate by making a film on Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto!
“I could have done much better as a director,” he said, “It’s a full-time
job behind the camera, and it’s a full-time job being in front of it. In the
future I will not act in any film that I direct.”
By his own account, Abbasi had never operated a RED camera when he set foot
on the set of Kambakht on the first day of filming — but quickly adapted to the
learning curve. “I realised that there would never be an ideal script, or an
ideal producer so I dove in headfirst with this one. Making this movie was like
film school on steroids for me,” he confesses, “and it was a blast. The idea
for this film came about during a casual conversation I was having with
Shehryar (Munawar).
The outdoor location of Kambakht
The outdoor location of Kambakht
It was exhausting, it took a lot out of us, but at the end of the day we
had a great time making it because it was quite literally a group of friends
getting together and deciding to make a movie.”
The director’s mantle is not the only one that Abbasi has donned for this
film, and not all the ones he has tried on have fit. His production house,
Kahani Films, was set up primarily to allow this film to be made. Given the
handful of crew members that were behind Kambakht, necessity led to Abbasi
taking on some behind-the-scenes responsibilities that he never wanted to
shoulder.
“Production-wise, this film was a nightmare,” he confessed, “I never wanted
to produce the film myself. The logistics of the set were a distraction —
booking flights, coordinating transport and food. I had to interrupt a shot at
one point because the bathroom was out of order and people were complaining!
From here on out Kahani Films will solely focus on the creative part of
filmmaking.”
The film is what Abbasi terms a “passion project” which seeks to break
multiple moulds. At a time when most filmmakers and actors are jumping on the
action movie bandwagon, Abbasi is trying his hand at a different genre, one
that is close to his heart as a lover of cinema.
“It’s a full-time job behind the camera, and it’s a full-time job being in
front of it. In the future I will not act in any film that I direct.”
“The film is an indie comedy,” he related, “I deliberately chose to make a
comedy because I wanted to make people laugh. It doesn’t try to be anything
else. I wanted to see if we could even make a film that was two hours’ long. If
people are laughing for a third of that time in the cinema, for me, that’s good
enough.”
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