SPOTLIGHT
SHORT FILM WITH A BIG HEART
This is Pakistani time travel, and we’re never on time!
Desi Standard Time Travel is a Pakistani-Canadian sci-fi drama short with a big heart.
It’s about fatherhood, second chances, and seeing your parents as real people for the first time in your life.
New father Imran has regrets about the last conversation he ever had with his father. So when he gets the opportunity to go back in time and end things on a better note, Imran jumps at the chance to get the parenting advice he sorely misses now that he has his own son, too.
But this is Pakistani time travel, and we’re never on time. Imran is sent back too far – all the way back to 1993, where he meets his parents in their early twenties, exactly when they’re pregnant with him as new immigrants in a foreign land.
Imran sees his parents as real people for the first time. They share their fears and excitement about becoming new parents, making a new life in Canada, and, when Imran helps the stubborn young version of his father assemble a crib, finally having the moment they should have had from the beginning.
Desi Standard Time Travel is directed by Kashif Pasta, an award-winning director, writer, and producer who uses film and storytelling to tell character-driven stories centered on South Asians and Muslims. He is the co-founder of Dunya Media, a production company that empowers filmmakers of colour to tell stories with joy, wonder, and purpose. He recently won the 2022 SXSW Grand Jury Prize and Audience Awards - Music Video for producing.
“There was a moment while rehearsing a scene Desi Standard Time Travel, that will affect how I tell South Asian stories forever,” he says. “Deep in the third act, father and son open up to each other about their fears of fatherhood. I wrote the scene. I knew what it was about. But actually being on set with the actors and hearing a character born in Canada and a character born in Pakistan open up emotionally made me realize that I had never heard these two accents be vulnerable with each other in my life.
“Something as simple as two men talking ended up being a cinematic experience I’d never seen before. I instantly knew two things: that this life I’ve chosen – telling stories that center our experiences as South Asians from a place of joy and purpose – was the right one. And that I am just getting started.
“Desi Standard Time Travel is an emotional autobiography: a love letter to my family and a portrait of our human flaws. It’s an opportunity to craft the kind of grounded, human Pakistani diaspora stories I love to tell, enhancing it with a genre element that makes it even more accessible. I am inspired by juxtapositions of the ordinary and extraordinary in Richard Curtis films like About Time and Yesterday that use fantastical plot devices to tell deeply human stories.
It’s about fatherhood, second chances, and seeing your parents as real people for the first time in your life.
“This film is about more than representation. It’s about the point of view that I want to bring to the world: one full of joy, wonder, fun, empathy, compassion, and good people trying their hardest to make their corner of the world a better place.”
The film stars Adolyn H. Dar as Imran, Ali Kazmi as his father Faisal, with Anika Zulfikar, Sumit Dhingra and Harleen Uppal playing pivotal roles.
More info at DesiStandardTimeTravel.com