She has won two Oscars, six Emmys and in 2012 Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. However, for the general public, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s name made headlines when Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy announced in April last year that the Pakistani filmmaker, activist and journalist would be in charge to direct the new film in a new series of three films in the galactic saga started by George Lucas. The first woman to achieve it after Lucas himself, Richard Marquand, Irvin Kershner, J.J.Abrams or Rian Johnson. His mission? That of reviving the story of Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker in a plot that follows the protagonist in her quest to rebuild the Jedi ors. The film, still without a definitive title, will arrive in cinemas in 2027. But before threading the needle, Obaid-Chinoy appeared yesterday at the congress of the audiovisual sector ISE to travel around a filmography packed with stories painful ones that have managed to change sexist laws and have had an impact on the media. Such as those explained in the short documentaries Saving face (2011) or A girl in the river (2015), which awarded him a golden statuette each. In the first, he talks about the case of a woman whose face was sprayed with acid by her husband. A shocking testimony that shook the Parliament of Pakistan. Like that of the protagonist of A girl in the river, an 18-year-old who managed to survive after being shot in the face by her father, who then put her in a bag and threw her away to the river. “When the film was nominated for an Oscar, it received a lot of attention from the Prime Minister of Pakistan. “I didn’t imagine that I could win, but when I heard my name and collected the award I said that the Prime Minister would change the law and, with my speech, I got him to do it”, he explains proudly while walking around the stage dressed in rigorous black and showing the audience some fragments of his films on a huge screen.
Hers is a work born out of an activism that made her wonder at just 10 years old why she could go to school in Karachi and a girl begging on the street could not. At 17 he started writing articles. “My father always told me: ‘If you tell the truth I will be with you, and so will the rest of the world.’ He would then cross the Atlantic to study Economics in Massachusetts against the will of his parents. The need to tell stories that worried her about people who suffered and had no voice made her travel to war zones as a freelance journalist in Syria or Afghanistan. He knocked on many doors to finance his first documentary about Afghan refugee children. “In times of darkness I saw humanity”, explains this energetic woman who firmly believes in the power of cinema to change the world. Her momentum pushed her to call Marvel to sell Ms. Marvel, series in which the first Muslim superheroine appears in a company production. And, without mentioning at any time his upcoming collaboration with Disney, Obaid-Chinoy makes it clear that there is nothing he can resist. “Nobody told me I couldn’t dream big. If they said no, I knew I could turn it into a yes. At times when telling the truth is very difficult, creating empathy is the key.” There is certainly anticipation for his feminist Star Wars.
