Narrative Breakdown

Film Opening Outline: The film opens on an unremarkable day, set a few weeks after a violent off screen event, the beating of Ikhlaq Hussain, which the audience is yet to discover. Saif, the protagonist, returns home with food where Saba, a close companion, is waiting in the living room. Their interaction is warm and seemingly ordinary. As they settle in to watch TV together, Saif casually asks her to stay the night, and she agrees, introducing a sense of closeness and trust between them. Things shift when Saif offers her to stay the night, joking he’ll take the couch with a line like, “You think I’d wanna sleep in the same bed as you?” Later, as Saba steps out of the bathroom and Saif sets up the couch, she insists on helping despite his protests. Her insistence leads her to a cupboard where bloody knuckles and a mask tumble out, exposing Saif’s vigilante secret. Shocked and scared, she asks, “What is this?”, followed by silence and heavy stares which shifts to a heavier moment at the kitchen table, where Saif shows a video of him and his brother Zain beating a man named Ikhalaq Hussain, a pedophile. Saba’s questions lead to Saif’s emotional breakdown, where he reveals his trauma, his voice breaking with “He kept using me!” The tension peaks as Saba, unable to sleep, leaves in the night, slamming the door, leaving Saif to find something disturbing on the laptop, muttering “Shit” as the screen cuts to black and credits roll, hinting at more to come.

Initial narrative: The narrative explores internal conflict and the traditional male tendency to bottle up trauma, a theme I relate to personally through my own struggles. The core part of the story was inspired by The Punisher, particularly its focus on vigilante justice and unresolved trauma. I was drawn to Frank Castle’s backstory, a man consumed by the need for revenge after a personal tragedy. The idea of someone carrying the weight of injustice and choosing violence as a form of control resonated with the initial concept. However, The Punisher is emotionally restrained. He rarely allows his vulnerability to surface, and that didn't fully match what I envisioned for Saif.

To bring emotional depth into the story, I turned to a short film I had made earlier called Dard. That film follows a man trying to suppress the pain of losing someone close by distracting himself with everyday routines. He goes running, he works out, he tries to move on. But the weight of that grief creeps in. At the gym, as he starts boxing, the emotional repression begins to unravel. His punches grow heavier, more erratic, and the rage takes over. Midway through, he breaks down. Not as a moment of failure, but as a moment of emotional honesty. It ends with him quietly standing over a grave, placing a rose, and walking away. That small act of acknowledgment becomes a quiet release.

here is a still from my short film 'Dard' where he finally faces his trauma

This balance between the controlled aggression of The Punisher and the emotional collapse in Dard shaped the core of Saif’s character. He is not just angry. He is haunted. He is not a stoic hero or a dramatic victim, but a human being trying to process pain in the only ways he knows. These two contrasting influences helped build a story that is both emotionally grounded and narratively intense. If you are interested, here is the film called 'Dard' (Pain), inspired by the passing of my nana, who I was very close to, this was the first film I ever made at 17, 2 years after he passed in 2022.