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‘A haunting tale of oppression’ – The Hollywood Reporter

‘A genre-bending horror movie’ – Indiewire

‘Straddles the line between a bold genre exercise and a bruising portrait of contemporary Pakistan to deliver a welcome story about resistance and resilience’ – Variety

★★★★

‘An intense psychological horror, one that tightens its vice with a slow and deliberate intensity’ – Screen Anarchy

In Flames is an incendiary horror-thriller that illuminates the psychological impact of gendered oppression and the horror of being young and in love in a fiercely patriarchal society.

After the death of the family patriarch, a mother and daughter’s precarious existence is ripped apart by figures from their past. They must find strength in each other if they are to survive the malevolent forces that threaten to engulf them.

In Flames is the feature directorial debut from award-winning writer and director Zarrar Kahn, and is produced by Anam Abbas (The Stained Dawn). Starring Ramesha Nawal,...

Directed by Karachi-born filmmaker Zarrar Kahn, In Flames is an impressive addition to contemporary Pakistani cinema. In it, the writer-director explores the consequences of living in the confines of a strongly patriarchal society through the eyes of Mariam (played by Ramesha Nawal), a young woman living with her younger brother and their mother, Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar), in a tiny apartment in Karachi, Pakistan.

After Mariam’s maternal grandfather dies, his brother tries to manipulate the family into signing over their small apartment to him. Mariam’s mother, isolated in her grief, becomes an easy target for influence and coercion at the hands of her cruel uncle. Distressed by her mother’s susceptibility, Mariam finds comfort in a secret romance with Asad (Omar Javaid), a fellow student.

When their relationship takes an unexpected turn for the worse, Mariam becomes plagued by nightmares and eerie apparitions. Meanwhile, her mother, entangled with her...

Societal threats are already heavy for medical student Mariam when bereavement leaves her undefended and the story untethers from realism

Pakistan’s patriarchal society is a too credible source of horror in this promising feature debut from Canadian-Pakistani writer/director Zarrar Khan, whose gallery of violent, predatory and swindling menfolk represent a living nightmare for its disempowered women. The story firmly grounds itself in everyday Karachi life before drifting into more supernatural realms, which makes it a revealing slice of social realism as much as a horror film.

Things are oppressive from the outset for 25-year-old medical student Mariam (Ramesha Nawal); a male stranger throws a brick through her car window, apparently for the offence of being female while driving. But as a result she befriends a relatively decent man: Asad, a student from liberal Canada. Their early romance progresses quickly and chastely (an official admonishes them for sitting too...

Described as a ghostly parable about Pakistan’s insidious patriarchal order, Game Theory Films brings In Flames to stream at home on VOD, and we’ve got an exclusive clip for you today.

Written and Directed by Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Zarrar Kahn, In Flames was the first Pakistani film to play in Cannes Director’s Fortnight in nearly half a century.

The cast for Zarrar Kahn’s In Flames includes Ramesha Nawal, Omar Javaid, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Adnan Shah Tipu, Mohammad Ali Hashmi and Jibran Khan.

In the thriller, “Mariam lives with her younger brother and their mother, Fariha, in a tiny apartment in Karachi. When Mariam’s maternal grandfather passes, his brother tries to manipulate them into signing over their apartment to him, a common occurrence in Pakistan, where women’s property rights are fragile.

“Mariam’s mother, grieving and isolated, is easy to influence. Mariam, distraught by her mother’s foolishness,...

A blend of genres creates a haunting, original film with a powerful meditation on patriarchy and family dynamics. Superb performances and stellar direction make In Flames a top-tier drama exploring trauma in a fundamentalist culture. The mother-daughter bond truly shines in this film, where the characters must unite to survive oppressive beliefs.

In Flames may be marketed as a horror film, but, in actuality, it is so much more than that. Indeed, for a film that's currently making its global festival run — it made its world premiere at Cannes in 2023 before arriving at the Toronto International Film Festival for its North American premiere — horror fundamentally serves as a universal entry point for audiences who might be watching a Pakistani film for the first time. Once seated, audiences will find that while In Flames fulfills its promise of thrills, it also offers a story brimming with heart. It's now in theaters.

A supernatural-charged exploration of patriarchy in Pakistan, Zarrar Kahn's In Flames is now playing in theaters via Game Theory Films, and we have an exclusive clip to share with Daily Dead readers!

Below, you can enter the "door to the beach" and take a plunge into our exclusive clip from In Flames. Written and directed by Zarrar Kahn, In Flames stars Ramesha Nawal, Omar Javaid, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Adnan Shah Tipu, Mohammad Ali Hashmi, and Jibran Khan.

"A psychological thriller, In Flames is a ghostly parable about Pakistan’s insidious patriarchal order. The film was the first Pakistani film to play in Director’s Fortnight in nearly half a century.

Mariam lives with her younger brother and their mother, Fariha, in a tiny apartment in Karachi. When Mariam’s maternal grandfather passes, his brother tries to manipulate them into signing over their apartment to him, a common occurrence in Pakistan,...

Writer-director Zarrar Kahn has spent the better part of the last calendar year sharing his feature directorial debut, In Flames, with audiences around the world. The film made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year, where it screened as part of the Directors' Fortnight collection. From there, it traveled along the festival circuit, making notable stops at TIFF and the Red Sea Film Festival, winning numerous awards along the way. At the latter, in fact, the film won the Golden Yusr for best film, which included a cash prize of $100,000.

"It's definitely deepened," Kahn said in our interview of how his relationship with In Flames has evolved over the course of the year. "I'm so grateful for how people are describing this movie, and the way it's landing as a movie that can speak to how systems of oppression enact violence on marginalized communities, both overtly and also covertly.

Described as a ghostly parable about Pakistan’s insidious patriarchal order, Game Theory Films brings In Flames to theaters on Friday, April 12, and we’ve got an exclusive clip for you today.

Written and Directed by Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Zarrar Kahn, In Flames was the first Pakistani film to play in Cannes Director’s Fortnight in nearly half a century.

The cast for Zarrar Kahn’s In Flames includes Ramesha Nawal, Omar Javaid, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Adnan Shah Tipu, Mohammad Ali Hashmi and Jibran Khan.

In the thriller, “Mariam lives with her younger brother and their mother, Fariha, in a tiny apartment in Karachi. When Mariam’s maternal grandfather passes, his brother tries to manipulate them into signing over their apartment to him, a common occurrence in Pakistan, where women’s property rights are fragile.

“Mariam’s mother, grieving and isolated, is easy to influence. Mariam, distraught by her mother’s foolishness,...

Screen Rant debuts a clip from the Pakistani psychological thriller In Flames, directed by Zarrar Kahn. The movie follows Mariam's struggles in a patriarchal society, highlighting gendered oppression and psychological stress. Through tension and artistic filmmaking, In Flames offers a unique peek into Karachi's culture and the life of women in Pakistan.

In Flames is Pakistan’s official entry for the Academy Awards’ Best International Films category, and Screen Rant has a clip from the movie. The movie is the feature film debut of writer/director Zarrar Kahn, who was born in the story’s setting of Karachi. The movie also marks Pakistan’s return to the Cannes Director’s Fortnight after 47 years, a win for both Kahn and filmmakers from the country.

Screen Rant is happy to debut a clip from the movie which sees Mariam, played by Ramesha Nawal, going into town alone, only to be targeted by a robber.

Zarrar Khan's storytelling is hauntingly beautiful, capturing the suffocating nature of patriarchal customs. The director blends genres skillfully to strengthen mother-daughter bond over generational trauma. In Flames disrupts the psyche with violent interactions, reflecting the challenging state of women's safety.

In Flames, Pakistan’s official entry for best international film at the 2024 Academy Awards, captures the complexity of a Pakistani society when moral ambiguity intersects with patriarchal customs. Written and directed by Zarrar Khan, this psychological thriller blends genres to effectively capture mental health when generational trauma is at the forefront and all agency seems lost. A roaring achievement for the first-time feature director, In Flames is an intensely vivid tale of survival. Khan’s humanistic approach towards understanding marginalized women is hauntingly beautiful.

8/10

After the death of the family patriarch, a mother and daughter's precarious existence is ripped apart by figures from their past. They must find strength...

The twist at the end of the trailer for In Flames revealed that the Pakistani thriller featured an element that lurked at the corners of the story. In a new clip that Game Theory Films has shared exclusively with Collider, however, we find out that there's more to this haunting threat than meets the eye. Set in Karachi, the movie centers around Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) a young girl who descends into a spiral of grief after the death of her grandfather. Her feelings are not helped by a mysterious figure who seems to be watching her. It is slated to premiere in theaters this Friday, April 12.

It’s not just the sudden brick through the car window that does it; it’s the fact that when Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) tells people about it afterwards, it’s suggested that she must have been partially to blame.

This is not an easy time to be a woman in Pakistan. Crimes apparently motivated by misogyny have increased in recent years, and even though the law offers protections, there’s no guarantee that the police will enforce it. Mariam’s encounter with unexpected violence is mirrored by another event in her life which has an equally shocking, albeit less physical impact: the death of her grandfather. Although the law gives women equal standing as heirs, custom does not, and many women don’t realise that they have any recourse if male relatives lay claim to the whole estate in such situations. In this case that means the home which Mariam...

"No one will find out...?" Game Theory Films has revealed an official trailer for an indie horror film titled In Flames, made by the Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker Zarrar Kahn. He's making his feature directorial debut with this film after a few other shorts. Described mainly as a psychological thriller, In Flames is a ghostly parable about Pakistan's insidious patriarchal order. It was the first Pakistani film to premiere in Director's Fortnight at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in nearly half a century, and was submitted as Pakistan's entry to this year's Academy Awards. After the death of the family patriarch, a mother and daughter’s precarious existence is ripped apart by figures from their past. They must find strength in each other if they are to survive the malevolent forces that threaten to engulf them. That sounds unsettling. Set mostly in Karachi, In Flames stars Ramesha Nawal, Omar Javaid, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Adnan Shah Tipu,...

Zarrar Kahn’s “In Flames” is set mostly in a cramped apartment nestled not too far from the rowdy, crowded streets of Karachi. The hustle and bustle from the outside — not to mention the social and societal forces that so define it — continually threaten to creep inside the walls of that apartment, which serves as a safe haven that may well crumble under the weight of the very world order that rules beyond its walls. A ghostly parable about Pakistan’s insidious patriarchal order, Khan’s film — the first Pakistani film to screen in Cannes Director’s Fortnight in nearly half a century — finds mother and daughter slowly losing grip on the reality they’ve always known.

Mariam can sense her life is fated to change. While she’s dutifully been studying to become a doctor, she knows the death of her grandfather is sure to have ruinous consequences for her home life.

Second of two Pakistani movies screening at Red Sea competition section this year (the other being “Wakhri”), “In Flames” also deals with the issues women face in the country nowadays, implementing, however, an approach that moves towards the supernatural on occasion.

In Flames is screening at Red Sea Film Festival

Mariam is a medical student living with her mother Fariha and younger brother in a tiny Karachi flat owned by her grandfather, following her father's death. When the grandfather dies, leaving a mountain of debt, an uncle steps in offering to cover them. Mariam is suspicious of his motifs, but her mother won't hear anything about it, insisting that the uncle only wants to help. In the meantime, and after an attack on her car while she was driving, she meets Asad, a fellow student, who was introduced to her by a friend. The two, and after his intense courting,...

In Flames, the feature debut of Pakistani-Canadian director Zarrar Kahn, has been picked up for the U.S. market by Game Theory Films.

The Urdu-language horror movie, which premiered as part of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight lineup, follows a young woman and her mother tormented by real and fantastic forces following the death of the family patriarch. The ensemble cast includes Ramesha Nawal, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Omar Javaid, Mohammad Ali Hashmi, Adnan Shah Tipu and Jibraan Khan.

A theatrical release is set in early 2024 in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver, with a focus on South Asian audiences across North America. A home video and video-on-demand release of In Flames is scheduled to follow in the second quarter of 2024.

The AFM deal for In Flames with sales agent XYZ Films follows Game Theory Films earlier nabbing the Canadian rights out of Cannes to the horror film that is also Pakistan...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

by Khushi Jain

When some realities are defined by fear, unease and terror, it is only right that they be translated into cinema as is. This is the basis of Zarrar Kahn's “In Flames”, a drama of patriarchal oppression robed in horror. This eerie debut feature premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival as part of Directors' Fortnight, and established itself as an authentic account of Pakistani womanhood through its spectral in(ter)ventions.

In Flames is screening at Cannes Official poster – 76th edition © Photo © Jack Garofalo/Paris Match/Scoop – Création graphique © Hartland Villa

Death marks the beginning of the film and of its many ghosts. The passing of a patriarch doesn't wipe out his presence but makes it even more prominent. Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) and her family are left stranded since almost everything they have is under the dead grandfather's name. Danger also lurks in the form of a greedy and deceitful uncle,...

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Game Theory Films will release “In Flames” on April 12, 2024.

“No one gives something for nothing.”

All of the evils that emerge over the course of “In Flames” — and there are quite a few of them — stem from that prescient warning that Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) relays to her mother. The 25-year-old medical student is alarmed by the resurfacing of her sleazy Uncle Nasir (Adnan Shah), who has conveniently offered to pay all of their family’s debts after a lifetime of neglecting her and her brother. The family’s financial struggles cause her concerns to fall on deaf ears, but a lot of agony could have been avoided if her mother had just learned the film’s key lesson: some gift horses should be looked in the mouth.

Zarrar Kahn’s genre-bending horror movie — which has the well-deserved honor...

In Zarrar Kahn’s eerie debut feature In Flames, the oppressive obstacles of the patriarchy are rendered as a ghost story. White-eyed apparitions haunt corners of rooms; uncanny sounds, resembling owl calls, carry us across scenes; and a visual palette of fiery reds and ghastly greens set the tone, filling the film with spooky-tale conventions.

Death instigates the horror of Kahn’s narrative, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of Cannes. When Mariam’s grandfather, the patriarch of their household in Karachi, dies, the young woman (played by Ramesha Nawal) and her family are suddenly left imperiled. Everything — the house, the car, various accounts — are in his name, which means any men in the extended family ostensibly have a right to seize them. The 25-year old medical student worries about her bereaved mother Fariah (Bakhtawar Mazhar) and her spacey brother Bilal (Jibraan Khan).

The pressures Mariam faces mount when...

XYZ Films has unveiled the first clip from Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection “In Flames,” a Pakistani-Canadian horror film directed by Zarrar Kahn.

The film, produced by Anam Abbas and executive produced by Shant Joshi, Todd Brown and Maxime Cottray, is part of XYZ’s New Visions slate. As revealed by Variety, XYZ had boarded the title last year.

In the Karachi-set film, after the death of the family patriarch, a mother and daughter’s precarious existence is ripped apart by figures from their past – both real and phantasmal. They must find strength in each other if they are to survive the malevolent forces that threaten to engulf them.

It is the first Pakistan-set film in Directors’ Fortnight since Jamil Dehlavi’s “The Blood of Hussain” was selected in 1980.

Kahn, who is now based in Canada, was born in and grew up in Karachi. “In Flames,” which is Kahn’s feature debut grew out of “Dia,...

When Zarrar Kahn moved back to Pakistan, the culture shock was immediate. Kahn was born in Karachi but spent his childhood and early school years in Mississauga, outside Toronto. He returned with his family to Pakistan when he was 13.

“It’s a really impressionable age and while my life, as a young man, wasn’t significantly changed, there was a huge disparity in the lives of the women I knew,” he says. “Their lived reality, navigating in public, was that they were always being watched by men. There’s a sinister sense of being patrolled. The use of gender, as a tool of discrimination, was very apparent.”

For In Flames, his debut feature, which will premiere in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar and is being sold worldwide by XYZ Films, Kahn translates that sinister sense of being watched into the language of supernatural horror. Taking inspiration from “those amazing French female...