Oscars 2012: The woman who renewed Pakistan's Pride - @sharmeenochinoy

  An uncommon Story of Courage..............................An extraordinary woman of Faith

On Monday morning, I woke up to the news that Pakistani Film maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and her co-director Daniel Junge received the award for best documentary in the short-subject category for “Saving Face.” This was the first ever Oscar for Pakistan as a common citizen of the country. It was a pride moment for me and the whole nation. As television channels broadcast footage of Obaid-Chinoy receiving Oscar, I signed in my twitter account to check what was going on in my timeline. #SavingFace was already in world wide trend. Tweeps tweeted and retweeted her acceptance speech, and so as the Facebook pages. The First thing that came to my mind was that it was great to see that someone came up with some thing that will save our faces! As we are all aware, we, Pakistani, are the top news breakers nowadays and most of the news to which Pakistan is linked to is continuous negative reports. This time, we made the news in a positive matter. Politicians share there words through TV Channels as well as social media. President congratulated her on the big win and Prime Minister announced that she would be given the highest civil award for making Pakistan proud. 

At this very moment, Pakistan was making the headlines for a positive achievement, not another bomb blast, political tag of war or natural disaster. It’s good to see a talented, young Pakistani receiving the most recognized trophy in the world, The Oscar statuette. Ms. Sharmeen dedicated her award to “all the women in Pakistan working for change.” She also said, “Don’t give up your dreams.This is for you.

'Saving face' documents the fate of women attacked by having acid thrown on them. While this denounces a reality, some news papers were writing that, "The award is a matter of personal and national pride, but its content is a matter of national shame". Although I fully agree with that this is really a great moments for Pakistan especially for the women of our country. It is the first time ever that a Pakistani film has been nominated and has won.  I believe that the worldwide exposure that this event created will bring more awareness on the issue of violence against women, prevent these unspeakable acts of violence against Pakistani women from occurring and enable instances to take actions against such inhuman treatments. 

In the end i would like to congratulate Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and her entire team for this achievement and thanking them for the pride and happiness they made us feel. We are extremely proud of you. Here is a clip of  Saving Face (Documentary)