Son of a Lion

Son of a Lion (2007)

بپي شير

In the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, a widowed father expects his only son to follow in his footsteps. Darra Adam Khel is home to the ethnic Pashtuns. The local industry is the handcrafting of firearms. It has been this way since long before the war on terror. Eleven-year-old Niaz Afridi works with his father learning how to make and test weapons just as Sher Alam learnt from his father before him. But Niaz doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wants to go to school.

Date of release
2007-10-06
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
Benjamin Gilmour

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$124.7K

Son of a Lion is a 2007 Australian-Pakistani drama film set in Darra Adam Khel, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The film tells the story of Niaz Afridi, a Pashtun boy who wants to go to school instead of carrying on the family business of manufacturing firearms. The director, Benjamin Gilmour, is an Australian former paramedic; Son of a Lion is his first film. It was filmed in the area around Darra with the cooperation of local residents. The actors are local non-professionals and much of the dialogue is improvised. It has received generally positive reviews. The film is in Pashto with English subtitles.

Production

Gilmour visited Darra Adam Khel in August 2001, on his way from Australia to Britain, and wanted to make a film that would combat negative Western perceptions of Pashtuns and Muslims following the 11 September attacks. He wrote the first draft of the film's script (the initial title was The Bullet Boy) while working as a nurse on the sets of British TV series such as The Bill and Murphy's Law.

Gilmour returned to Pakistan in 2005 and spent several months building up the network of contacts necessary to make the film, while teaching film at IQRA University in Lahore. Eventually Gilmour was introduced to Hayat Khan Shinwari, a landowner in the Darra area, who offered him protection and assistance in making the film. Khan Shinwari is credited as the film's executive producer and assistant director.

Foreigners were banned from entering Darra soon after the 11 September attacks, and Gilmour didn't apply for a permit to enter the area, expecting that none would be granted. Instead he filmed in secret, wearing a salwar kameez and a long beard to blend in.

Gilmour says that his original script "was ridiculed by the locals I wanted to work with" and so "it was soon abandoned and we started from scratch." While the film's "basic premise" remained the same, significant changes were made to its plot, and much of the dialogue was improvised. The screenplay is credited to "Benjamin Gilmour in collaboration with the people of Kohat and Darra Adam Khel, Pakistan."

According to Gilmour, "Auditions were not possible, as they would have involved exposing our mission. So our cast was taken from a small number of families in the collaborating clans." Khan Shinwari himself appears in it, and he persuaded his son Niaz (who plays Niaz), mother (Niaz's grandmother), business partner (Niaz's uncle) and others to act in it as well. Gilmour also appears in one scene, as a woman wearing a burqa.

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