Pakistani filmmaker Sarah Jehaan Khan documents stories from the front lines of the climate crisis
(Courtesy of Mashion)
“I am trying to show the human cost of climate change, particularly in Pakistan," explains Sarah.
When Pakistani filmmaker Sarah Jehaan Khan gets behind her camera, her goal is simple: put a face to the climate crisis. “People often perceive environmental problems as distant, academic issues,” Sarah explains. “I am trying to show the human cost of climate change, particularly in Pakistan.”
Pakistan is the fifth most climate vulnerable nation in the world. Climate-fuelled extreme weather events — such as flooding, sea erosion and droughts — have already forced millions of people in Pakistan to flee their homes for other parts of the country and cost the country about $4 billion. Sarah’s films highlight the effect of the climate emergency in her home country, particularly on girls and women.
In her first short film, “Harvesting Hope,” Sarah followed a group of young women cotton pickers in Multan, Pakistan. “It was depressing to realize most of these girls were my age, but instead of going to school, they worked in these fields from dawn to dusk,” says Sarah, who was 16 when she completed the film. “They had blisters on their hands and were suffering from respiratory complications due to the chemicals in pesticides used to grow cotton. They were at risk for reproductive issues that I’d never heard of. I wanted to document their stories so people would understand the human cost of this industry.”
“Harvesting Hope” won an award at the Girls Impact the World Film Festival, among other distinctions. As people around the world viewed the film on social media, Sarah travelled to the U.S. and around South Asia to talk about her work. The Asian Development Bank chose to screen the documentary for Pakistani political leaders and judges at an annual conference.
But despite this attention, Sarah says she didn’t see a lot of change for the girls featured in the film. “The follow-through was difficult. There was no significant government action to help these girls,” she admits. “But something I always try to do in my films is highlight a solution along with the problem. In this case, it was organic farming. The more people who shared the film, the more people were exposed to the organic farming organizations I featured. So I didn’t change Pakistan’s agricultural policies or end use of pesticides, but I raised a lot of awareness for organic farmers and support for a different way of producing an important crop.”
“We cannot address the climate crisis without ensuring women’s participation and supporting Indigenous knowledge in policy.”
Sarah’s focus on smaller changes — instead of political power — to impact the lives of people in rural areas continued with her second film. “The Ripple Effect” follows women and girls in rural Pakistan suffering from prolonged and frequent droughts caused by the climate crisis. The women walked eight kilometres a day to fetch water for laundry and household chores and also had to purchase drinking water, further burdening low-income families.
The film documents local efforts to help women add rain barrels and pipes to their homes to conserve water — and the outsized impact of this simple solution on the women’s lives. “We use this [rainwater] to feed our animals, in our bathroom and to wash clothes and dishes,” says a young woman in the film. “Since I have water in my house, I can find the time for a job.” Another woman describes how she’s used the money she saved buying water to send her daughter to school.
Sarah’s most recent film highlights the work of Manal Shad, a 12-year-old climate activist speaking about deforestation in a rural, mountainous area of Pakistan. Sarah first saw a clip of Manal on social media and was struck with her presence and concern about the environment in her community. “It isn't uncommon for girls to be that vocal in cities like Lahore or Islamabad, but it is relatively rare to see a girl speaking at public forums in areas like Dir where Manal lives and where audiences are almost entirely men,” Sarah explains.
On a holiday break from her studies at Oxford University, Sarah travelled to Dir, found Manal’s family and asked if she could tell her story on film. For the next year, Sarah spent her vacations living with Manal’s family and filming her life — and edited the short film at night and on weekends at Oxford. Sarah called the film “Passoon,” which means “to rise up for a cause” in Pashto, Sarah and Manal’s native language.
Sarah Jehaan Khan and Manal on the set of “Passoon.” (Courtesy of Mashion)
Manal began speaking out when she noticed that forests in her community were disappearing — loggers were cutting down trees and not replanting. She became concerned that deforestation of surrounding mountains was leading to flooding in towns like hers. “There used to be trees on these mountains, so the soil would absorb most of the water,” Manal says in “Passoon.” “Now they are only absorbing 10% of water. People have always lived in these areas, the issue is with our bad management of resources!” What Manal witnessed in her community is happening across Pakistan. With the highest annual deforestation rate in the world, experts fear that all forest areas in the country could be gone within the next five years.
In Manal’s story, Sarah saw the power of popular media to inform and educate, especially when schools fail to do so. “Manal did not learn about climate change in school, but from Deutsche Welle transmissions on the radio,” Sarah explains. “These radio channels are available in remote regions of Pakistan, which means they play a particularly powerful role in communicating to people about important issues.”
“Passoon” won first prize at the ConnectHer Film Festival earlier this year — but Sarah is focused on how the film helped bring more attention to Manal’s story. “Places like Dir are far from mainstream media’s attention. But now more people have seen Manal’s story. She does interviews and people are seeking her out to talk about environmental issues in the region.”
Sarah’s love of films started early. “Until I was about 12 years old, my family lived in remote regions of Pakistan. We had just one VCR tape, which was ‘Rocky IV,’” she says. “My brother and I watched it repeatedly until we had memorized the script. I still think the film has everything — perfect soundtrack, lovable underdog, thrilling plot, commitment to a storyline so cheesy that there is just no time to dwell on moral complexity.”
Sarah also remembers trips to the cinema as a teenager and “dissolving in her seat” at films by Pakistani director Shoaib Mansoor. Mansoor’s “Bol” and “Khuda Kay Liye” deal with social issues Sarah had never seen on screen in Pakistan: forced marriage, rape, gender identity and family planning. She says Mansoor’s films showed her “the role cinema plays in sparking conversations about socio-political issues which are otherwise shrouded in stigma.”
But as much as Sarah loved stories on screen, it was a book that persuaded her to get into filmmaking: Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” “She was a beautiful writer,” Sarah says. “And she combined that talent with her background as a biologist. I wanted to do the same thing, to be an artist and a scientist.”
“I’ve seen the immediate threat — droughts, floods, extreme weather — to women. And that fundamentally changed my perception of this crisis.”
Despite her success, Sarah says she doesn’t see herself as a filmmaker in the future. “I think film is always going to be a great passion of mine, but I'm becoming more focused on the policy side of climate change as well,” she shares. After graduating from Oxford over the summer, Sarah hasn’t taken a break. She’s working at Pakistan’s Human Rights Ministry in Islamabad and, in a year or two, plans to pursue a master’s degree in water science policy and management.
Whatever career she pursues, Sarah is determined to bring more women into conversations about climate change: “I’ve seen the immediate threat — droughts, floods, extreme weather — to women. And that fundamentally changed my perception of this crisis. It no longer felt like a distant issue limited to glaciers in the arctic. But I’ve also seen that those most vulnerable are marginalised from political and decision-making processes. The policymakers from South Asia who attended screenings of my films at conferences were almost entirely middle-aged men. We cannot address the climate crisis without ensuring women's participation and supporting Indigenous knowledge in policy.”
Read more
