Women’s Day Tribute: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: A women that shook the Nation’s patriarchy

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy best known for winning Oscars for Pakistan has made over a dozen-multi award winning films in over 10 countries around the world and is the first non-American to be awarded the Livingston Award for best international reporting.

She is someone that is celebrated not only in Pakistan but all over the world for her contributions in the media industry to bring forward the open secret of the society at large. But where did the Chinoy we know today came from? Why did she win an Oscar and what is her thought process behind the stories that she made? On the auspicious occasion of women’s day, let’s look at what this two-time Oscar-winner faced and the fame that made her one of the most influential people in not just Pakistan but globally.

Chinoy was born on 12 November 1978 in Karachi, Pakistan, to Gujarati Muslim parents, her mother, Saba Obaid, is a social worker and her father, Sheikh Obaid, was a businessman, who met with his creator in 2010. She also has a younger sister, Mahjabeen Obaid.

She studied at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, followed by Karachi Grammar School. In her own words, she was not inclined towards academics though she received good grades. Later her family wanted her to move to United States for her higher education. She studied at Smith College, from where she completed her bachelor’s degree in Economics and Government in 2002. Obaid-Chinoy then received two master’s degrees from Stanford University in Communication and International Policy Studies.

The spark to change the society was not recent according to Sharmeen, she was an undercover investigative journalist at the tender age of 17. She sent a story to the editor naming and shaming some influential names of the time, which resulted badly as the men she‘d written about wanted to teach her a lesson and spray-painted her and her family’s name with unspeakable profanities around the neighbourhood.

After only a few years, when she was 21, she realised that something visual will be more effective to bring forth the evils of the society, so she became a documentary/filmmaker, in the quest of turning her camera onto the marginalized communities on the front lines in war zones. Eventually, she came back to her homeland and started to bring awareness on the domestic violence against women in the rather backward areas of Pakistan.

She always wanted to be the voice of the unheard aka the survivors, but not much women lived to tell their tales and ended up in the unmarked graves. But the luck was on her side as she came to know about a woman named Saba who unbelievably survived after being shot in the face by her own father and uncle just because she chose to marry a man of her liking and that is when she realised that this was the story that she wants to work on.

Chinoy not only narrated the story of the girl but was also resolute to get the girl justice, taking them to the court, Saba was pressurised to forgive them – which she eventually did on the final day of the hearing, so unfortunately the hyenas were let free because they found a loophole that if the victim forgives them, the case shall be dismissed, but the fire inside Chinoy had just started. She went on to make another documentary called ‘Saving Faces.’

“By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time,” she once said. Saving Face, which took Pakistan’s acid assault against women to the public stage, epitomised this sentiment. This was her first film that won the Academy Awards in LA, which is when she became a household name, people joined the fray, asking for the loophole in the law to be closed. This movement got hype like none other even the Prime Minister of Pakistan pledged to change the law that granted Saba’s family the freedom they never deserved.

Then finally in October of 2016, after months on campaigning on the loophole, it was indeed closed. Now when there will be murders in the name of honour killing, the accused will receive life imprisonment. Yet, it was not enough! Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy realised that just the very next day when another women faced the wrath of her male family members and was brutally killed and more killings followed.

To change the way a society has worked for decades cannot be changed by a mere change in the law. She needed to get across the message her film provided to every heart in every city, town and village in the country, but how? How would she put across the message to small towns and villages. But as we say it when there is a way there is a will, she built mobile cinemas in a truck that rolled through the length and the breadth of the country, going into small towns and villages called ‘Dekh Magar Pyar Se’ (Look But With Love). She was then faced with yet another challenge and that was how the “Gairatmand” (Righteous) will let the women watch cinema along with men! But Chinoy was on a mission and did not let anything get in her way so she built a cinema inside a cinema, outfitting it with seats and a screen where women could go inside and watch without fearing the burden of the men in their families. This way they were welcomed in so many places and had the chance to see and talk and adapt according to the new found knowledge they had gotten.

Chinoy cognizant of what different audiences will sit through, and think deeply about the balance between informing viewers and disturbing them. But that is not all, she is not only a filmmaker but also a human rights worker and a star of Asia Society’s Asia 21 young leaders’ network. She has worked with refugees and the marginalised from Saudi Arabia to Syria to the Philippines. By bringing typically unheard voices to the forefront, she has often helped bring critical change to these communities. Her short films won her several Emmys and other awards along the way including the broadcast journalist of the year award in the UK in 2007 by One World Media for her work in a series of documentary films for Channel 4, which included a film about xenophobia in South Africa titled ‘The New Apartheid’ and ‘Afghanistan Unveiled’. Her other films have been awarded The Overseas Press Club Award, The American Women in Radio and Television Award, The Cine Golden Eagle award and the Banff Rockie Award.