{"id":5714,"date":"2026-08-09T16:38:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5714"},"modified":"2026-08-09T16:38:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:38:23","slug":"locarno-sufi-trance-doc-as-light-as-air-director-umair-bilal-on-surrendering-to-a-pakistani-shrine-town-i-became-part-of-its-rhythm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5714","title":{"rendered":"Locarno Sufi Trance Doc \u2018As Light as Air\u2019 Director Umair Bilal on Surrendering to a Pakistani Shrine Town: \u2018I Became Part of Its Rhythm\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tUmair Bilal spent months in Sehwan, Pakistan, trying to direct a documentary. Then he gave up.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5712\">\u2018Spider-Man: Brand New Day\u2019 Becomes Second-Fastest Movie to Hit $1 Billion Overseas, Powers to $1.67 Billion Globally<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cEvery time I tried to impose that logic onto Sehwan, it felt like I was working against the place rather than with it,\u201d the Pakistani filmmaker tells <em>Variety<\/em> of his debut feature, \u201cAs Light as Air,\u201d which premieres in Semaine de la Critique at the 79th Locarno Film Festival. What began as an attempt to find characters and structure inside the Sufi shrine town instead became a 65-minute surrender to its rhythm \u2013 no plot, no protagonist, just pilgrims, malangs \u2013 wandering ascetics who have given up conventional life to devote themselves to the shrine \u2013 and the ecstatic communal trance of the dhamal.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBilal traces the project\u2019s origins to sensory fragments rather than plot. \u201cWhat stayed with me was not a sequence of events, but a series of sensations: people praying in deeply absorbed, almost transcendent states, the smell of burning incense, the glow of oil lamps, devotional music, and the feeling that these places operated according to a different logic from the outside world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSehwan quickly overtook whatever nostalgia had drawn him there in the first place. \u201cMy childhood may have opened the door to Sehwan, but once I arrived, Sehwan gradually replaced those memories with its own reality,\u201d he says. \u201cBy the end, I realized the emotional and visual world of the film belonged far more to Sehwan than to my childhood memories of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe shift from filmmaker to participant happened gradually, not in a single moment. Bilal describes an improvised method he developed with co-cinematographer Konstantin Stell: standing at intersections and asking which street was \u201ccalling\u201d them, then following it without rationalizing the choice. \u201cQuite often we would spend the next eight hours filming whatever unfolded there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThat same instinct carried into the edit with editor Siddhant Sarin. \u201cWe began with an initial structure guided by emotion, letting images and sound dictate their own rhythm,\u201d Bilal says. \u201cRather than simply watching people engage with spirituality, we wanted to reinterpret the footage so viewers could move closer to a feeling of immersion and journey through those emotions themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI was no longer standing outside Sehwan trying to explain it,\u201d he says of the moment the project stopped feeling like a film he was making. \u201cI had become part of its rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBilal resists categorizing the film for audiences used to character-driven documentaries. \u201cI don\u2019t really pitch the film by saying, \u2018It\u2019s an experimental documentary.\u2019 I think labels can sometimes create unnecessary distance,\u201d he says. He compares its structure to music rather than plot. \u201cIt moves through repetition, variation, tension, release, and emotional progression rather than cause and effect. The film asks audiences to inhabit a place instead of constantly asking, \u2018What happens next?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5710\">David Ellison Is Promising Theater Owners Contractual Guarantees for Paramount-Warner Bros. 30-Film Annual Slate. But What if Moviegoers Don\u2019t Care?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe post-production team spans Berlin and Mumbai \u2013 composer Sui Sofie Heinz and post-production supervisor Philipp Schmeelcke in Berlin, sound designer Sudarshan Sawant and colorist Mahak Gupta in Mumbai \u2013 alongside Sarin\u2019s editing. Bilal says the international makeup wasn\u2019t a plan. \u201cI didn\u2019t consciously set out to build an international team. Looking back, that is what it became, but it was never a strategy,\u201d he says. \u201cNone of the collaborations felt strictly professional or transactional. They developed through friendship and long conversations about life, cinema, and how we understood the material.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHeinz began composing only after immersing herself in raw footage and long conversations with Bilal about his years in Sehwan. \u201cWe never wanted there to be a clear boundary between the field recordings and the score,\u201d he says. \u201cWe wanted the music and the recorded sounds to flow into one another so naturally that the audience would stop thinking about where one ended and the other began.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOn the ethics of filming a spiritual community that isn\u2019t his own, Bilal describes weeks spent without a camera \u2013 sitting with pilgrims, shoe-keepers and flower sellers before ever shooting. \u201cI have my own relationship with Sufism, but I would never claim the experiences of the malangs or pilgrims as my own,\u201d he says. \u201cThe relationship had to exist before the film. The camera came after the human connection, not before it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOne remark stuck with him: a Malang once suggested it was Qalandar, not Bilal, who had called him to Sehwan. \u201cA Malang said that to me very early on, and I found it interesting because it reflected how many people in Sehwan understand their relationship to the shrine and spiritual nature of the city,\u201d Bilal says. \u201cIt reminded me that the film wasn\u2019t simply the product of my own intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe film also makes a deliberate omission: it never directly addresses the 2017 ISIS suicide bombing at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine. \u201cThe bombing is part of Sehwan\u2019s history, but I didn\u2019t want it to become the lens through which audiences understood Sehwan,\u201d Bilal says. \u201cI tried to ask a different question: where does Sehwan\u2019s resilience come from?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAsked about Pakistan\u2019s place in his identity as a filmmaker based between Abu Dhabi and Berlin, Bilal points to lineage rather than distance. He names Dziga Vertov, Mani Kaul and Gianfranco Rosi as touchstones. \u201cI don\u2019t think of them as influences to imitate. I think of them as filmmakers I continue to learn from,\u201d he says. \u201cIf \u2018As Light as Air\u2019 adds even a small voice to that ongoing conversation, I would feel incredibly fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5708\">Box Office: \u2018Spider-Man: Brand New Day\u2019 Flies to Third-Biggest Second Weekend of All Time With $144 Million<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Director Umair Bilal on Locarno premiere &#8216;As Light as Air,&#8217; surrendering authorship to a Sufi shrine town and its ecstatic communal trance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4457,1906],"class_list":["post-5714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-as-light-as-air","tag-locarno-film-festival-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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