Oscar-winning documentary film Saving Face. Her first feature film is Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters). It first aired in 2003. Khamosh Pani is a fictional film that looks at religion, gender, honour killings, assault, trauma and colonialism in the wake of partition. It depicts the trauma of partition through a woman’s point of view. Sumar links the violent aftermath of partition to the violence of Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization in 1979. The latter is a theme she explores in her other work as well, namely For a Place Under the Heavens. Sumar continues in the tradition of Partition cinema, among the likes of Deepa Mehta, Kamal Hasan, and Chadraprakash Dwivdei. Khamosh Pani is one of the first films to offer a perspective on partition cinema from a Muslim lens. Khamosh Pani was initially supposed to be a documentary film. When Sumar was researching for the film, she did not want to make her subjects relive trauma. The film is a fictional narrative that looks at the necessity of silence in face of healing from trauma. Sumar received funding for Khamosh Pani from a number of international sources, including France, Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden. Most of the film was shot in Pakistan. Khamosh Pani won fourteen international awards. It won Best Screenplay at the third KaraFilm Festival in 2003. Sumar won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno International Film Festival. She also won the Audience Award and Silver Montgolfiere at the Nantes Three Continents Festival. Khamosh Pani is a First Run title endorsed by the Human Rights Watch. Sumar faced difficulty finding places to screen the film in Pakistan due to its controversial themes. Sumar organised forty-one free screenings of the film across Pakistan. The film sparked a controversy regarding the main character’s suicide after its screening at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Personal life She has one daughter, Dhiya, who accompanied Sumar in For a Place Under the Heavens. Sumar established the Centre for Social Science Research in Karachi. Filmography Awards and nominations References External links Profile at vidhifilms.com Women of Pakistan feature New York Times review of "Silent Waters" Video Interview of Sabiha Sumar 1961 births Pakistani women film directors Pakistani documentary filmmakers Urdu film producers Alumni of Wolfson College, Cambridge Sarah Lawrence College alumni Living people Film directors from Karachi Women documentary filmmakers