No,Your Honour

The film,which won the Purple Orchid Best Film award at the Asian Festival of First Films,Singapore this year,highlights issues behind such killings from the perpetrator’s perspective. “I wanted to explain the origins of such cultural practices and understand the psyche of the people behind it,” says Hari. “The subject is depressing but it intrigued me,” she adds. Hari spent two years in the UK,meeting with families of more than 20 victims from different religious backgrounds and strata of society,before she shot the film in just 24 days in Birmingham in 2008.

The film tells the story from the point of view of Nazir Ali Khan,a history professor at Birmingham University with a 17-year old daughter,Saira. She is eager to join college so that she can spend time with her English boyfriend,about whom her parents know nothing.

But when a marriage proposal comes for her,she has to choose between her family and her own desires.

The director says her decision to depict Muslim characters in the film was an attempt to clear misconceptions that such happenings are typical of any one particular community. “I believe honour killings are social malaises rather than religious issues,” says Hari.

By casting lesser-known British-Asian actors from the British stage and television,Hari kept the budget within $ 1 million. She now plans to tour Berlin with the film in search of international distributors.