FILMATIQUE: What Will People Say is a powerful depiction of a young Pakistani-Norwegian woman's journey to navigate and reconcile her dueling identities. The film touches upon themes of heritage, family, honor, freedom, and gender expectations as mediated through Nisha's vastly different cultural vantage points. For you, I imagine this is a deeply personal film insofar as it is based on your own life experience. Can you describe the moment you decided to become a filmmaker, and your process of translating this story to the screen?
IRAM HAQ: I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was very young. This film is very much inspired by my own experience—when I was a teenager I was kidnapped to Pakistan, and when I came back after a year I wanted to tell this story, but I knew that I was too young to be ready to tell it at that point. I was just sixteen, so I waited until I was grown up and had the courage to tell it in a wise way.
But my interest in writing and filmmaking came very early, I think I was about twelve or thirteen when I knew I wanted to be a storyteller. Growing up with my father watching Bollywood, going to the library and coming home with lots of books, that was something I enjoyed since I was a child. Then I began to act in my early twenties, and slowly started to write and make my own films.
FLMTQ: What Will People Say strikes me as particularly resonant today, as we witness increasing levels of social and political polarization, the oppressive effects of patriarchy, and general fear across the world. One of the film's great strengths lies in its nuance, its refusal to unequivocally take sides, and rather to depict conflict as rooted in competing narratives and/or misunderstanding. For example, in the film's penultimate scene, Nisha's father's expression of sadness or remorse at her fate unsettles our conception of him as a domineering and violent father. What role does nuance, or ambiguity, play in your work? And why do you think it is so important here?
IH: I was very much interested in understanding, for myself, my father and why he did what he did. I also wanted to do something different from the stories you read in tabloids and newspapers. I wanted to tell the story from the father's point of view as well, so you can understand where he comes from, and why he is like this—he's not just evil. I wanted people to see the kind of pressure he is under, so we can better understand why he acts so badly. I focused on making people understand why these type of conflicts arise when such different cultures meet.