Director H E Amjad Khan, on the making of the Malala biopic and why it took so long to bring it to Indian cinemas
Nikhil Nihal (MUMBAI MIRROR; January 11, 2020)

On January 25 last year, H E Amjad Khan’s Gul Makai, the biopic on Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, was screened at a United Nations event in London for 450 dignitaries. Now, the film is ready for a theatrical release in India. Ask the filmmaker why it took so long, and he explains, “Whenever I thought of releasing it, India-Pakistan relations got worse. The Pulwama attack, Balakot airstrike and (Lok Sabha) elections happened last year. Eventually, I realised things weren’t going to change anytime soon, so there was no point delaying the film.”

Gul Makai marks the big screen debut of TV actress Reem Shaikh, who plays Malala in the movie. Khan informs that as part of prep, he asked the cast to read up all the information available in the public domain. “That way, they’d get an idea of their characters. For Reem, I conducted a 40-day workshop to get the dressing sense, body language, mannerisms and dialect right,” he informs.

Khan states that his intention for making the film was to educate Indian parents who are not very supportive of daughters. “I wanted to highlight the revolutionary change and remarkable impact a girl can bring about,’ he says, going on to heap praise on Atul Kulkarni, who essays Malala’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai. “I cast him as he effortlessly slipped into the character. The only tough part was getting the Pashto accent right. Divya (Dutta, who plays Malala’s mother Toor Pekai) is a marvelous actor who doesn’t need glycerin. She also sang a song in the Pashto language,” he concludes.