With films like Swipe, Shehr e Tabassum, Pakistan s Puffball Studio depicts dystopias that feel all too real An app that mirrors mob justice. A dystopia where smiling is the only expression allowed. Pakistan s Puffball Studio and its founder Arafat Mazhar skewer the mechanisms of intolerance and hate through their films. Manik Sharma December 15, 2020 10:58:16 IST Still from Puffball Studio s Swipe
In the animated short film
Shehr e Tabassum, the ‘Supreme Leader’ of a dystopian Pakistan in 2071 passes a law declaring all expressions other than smiling a crime. It’s the state’s way of manufacturing both consent and a flimsy yet persuasive image of a happy civilisation. People who refuse are deemed as traitors. The drugged, exclusionary vision of the future that the short film offers is eerily echoed by the present of many countries around the world