Shehzad Hameed’s documentary wins at Green Image Film Festival in Japan

KARACHI: Documentary filmmaker and journalist, Shehzad Hameed has been on a winning streak lately. A quick look at his social media reveals the awards he has bagged within the last few days. In March 2021, his documentary Bangladesh’s Delta Disaster won Best Documentary at the Madras Independent Film Festival and the Tagore International Film Festival 2021. Right before March came to an end, Shehzad Hameed added another award to his list, with his documentary on the Himalayan Deltas winning at the Green Image Film Festival in Japan.

Titled Pakistan’s Himalayan Meltdown, the documentary explores the environmental and geopolitical problems created by water supply from melting glaciers. The film was amongst 177 nominated at the Green Image Film Festival out of which only 12 were selected by members of the Hitotsubashi University and the National Film Archive of Japan.

Announcing the achievement on his social media, Shehzad Hameed wrote, “Pakistan’s Himalayan Meltdown was filmed in 2019 that focused on why the second largest icecap outside the polar regions is melting at the fastest rate in human history. One-third of the Himalayan glaciers is projected to melt away by the end of this century due to climate change, threatening the supply of water to nearly 2 billion people across South Asia. The documentary discovers how water can potentially become a major flash point between India and Pakistan as the team went undercover to observe the proliferation of water by thieves in Karachi.”

The filmmaker also made headlines in 2020 when he won the Gender Equality Impact Changemaker award for recognizing the need to build a more equal world for women through his films.