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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
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Saving Face: Horror and Healing in Pakistan
It must be in our genes. Us Homo sapiens. The impulse of the male of the species to hurt, to kill, in a great variety of manners, the female.
Personal experience, news reports of countless ilks, books, history, documentary and fictional films and television shows, websites—all tell of this ubiquitous violence, physical and psychological, social and economic.
The particular manner of violence explored in the 2012 Academy Award winning documentary “Saving Face” is the throwing of acid on the faces of Pakistani women by Pakistani men.
The film presents two related stories: The volunteer work of Pakistan-born, London-based surgeon Dr. Mohammad Jawad to help reduce the devastating damage caused by the thrown acid—or, sometimes, gasoline followed by a flame; and the successful initiative to reform the nation’s judicial system to hold perpetrators accountable and, therefore, provide justice.
We see Dr. Jawad speak with his patients, work on them, followed by the dramatic results. “You know what?” he comments, “In a way, I’m saving my own face. Because I’m part of the society which has this disease.”
Sarkar Abbas, Advocate High Court, fights on behalf Zakia. Zakia’s husband is the first man to receive a sentence, two life terms, under the new law.