Indie film writer, producer, and director Iram Parveen Bilal released her latest feature film “I’ll Meet You There” in 2020. The family drama, starring Pakistani-American actor Faran Tahir, was nominated for an award at the 2020 South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival. However, when the pandemic forced SXSW to cancel, the film premiered in-person on July 11th in Los Angeles.
As a female director of color like Mati Diop, Bilal advocates for representation of female directors in the industry. To this end, she participates with organizations including Women in Film, Film Independent, and CAPE New Writers Fellowship. She is also a member of the Alliance of Women Directors and Film Fatales.
“I think we are certainly doing better just in the past five years. Asian and South Asian is certainly becoming a ‘flavor’ for Hollywood. I hope it becomes more than just that and that our stories highlight the shared human experience we are living in America,” Bilal says.
Iram Parveen Bilal revives Pakistani cinema
Bilal began her film career as an Assistant Editor for companies Bunim Murray Productions and Freelance Films LLC. Next, she went on to engage in marketing outreach for the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. She also directed a commercial for her alma mater, the California Institute of Technology, at this time.
Bilal founded Los Angeles-based Parveen Shah Productions in January of 2009. As CEO, she also directs, writes, and produces feature films for her company. Bilal additionally spent four years as Co-Chair of the Asian American Writer’s Committee of the Writers Guild of America West until 2018.
During this time Bilal wrote, directed, and produced the 2013 mystery thriller “Josh: Independence Through Unity.” Netflix soon picked up the feature-length debut, making it the first Pakistani feature on Netflix.
“Nobody was making films in Pakistan at the time,” Bilal recalls. “We were incidentally accredited as one of the pioneers of the new wave. In the months preceding the release of Josh, some other Pakistani films were released, and so 2013 was touted as the revival of Pakistani cinema.”
In 2014, Bilal launched the screenwriting lab Qalambazz. The six-month remote program pairs screenwriters residing in South Asia with mentors to develop original stories into feature-length films.
Iram Parveen Bilal drops science to pursue art
Bilal was born in the United States, but raised in Nigeria and Pakistan. At seventeen, Bilal qualified for the international physics competition Asian Physics Olympiad. This earned her a full scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. So in 2004, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Environmental Science Engineering and Business Management.
“My parents [started] from scratch,” Bilal tells the New York Times. “Their parents migrated from British India to Pakistan in the Partition and left everything. My father’s father ended up setting up a mechanic and auto workshop, and my mom’s father was a postmaster. For them, education was everything.”
After finishing her degree, the scientist and engineer unexpectedly undertook a two-year film program at the University of Southern California. She soon graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Producing with a focus in Directing.
Bilal’s mother is a physicist, and her father is a chemistry professor. “My mother definitely disapproved, I think, for a really long time,” she says about her parents’ reaction to her pursuing film. “But now I think she’s understanding it, and they’re proud.”
“I’ll Meet You There” reverses the narrative of South Asian women
“I’ll Meet You There” is Bilal’s latest film about a Muslim Pakistani-American family in Chicago after 9/11. Faran Tahir plays Majeed, a police officer and widower, who supports his daughter Dua’s dreams of becoming a professional dancer in Kathak (Indian classical dance). The father-daughter duo face challenges when Majeed’s conservative father pays an unexpected visit. Meanwhile, Majeed gets an undercover assignment from the Chicago police to surveil members of his community at the local Mosque.
“I do think I was just frustrated with the constant oppressed-Muslim-woman situation that is always pushed forward,” Bilal told the New York Times. “The fact is that there are a lot of fathers out there in the world who are extremely sweet and positive to their daughters, and this exists.”
An independent writer/director film project, “I’ll Meet You There” earned one of ten nominations for the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Award at the South by Southwest film festivals. The competition received thousands of submissions. The drama was written, directed, and produced by Bilal with co-producers Joy Ganes and Ilana Rossein and officially premiered in the August 2020 virtual Bentonville Film Festival.
“This is a story about a family trying to reconnect. Yes, they happen to be Muslim. But it’s about secrets, it’s about intergenerational trauma, conflict, those things,” says Bilal.
Watch “I’ll Meet You There” on major platforms including YouTube, Amazon, and Apple TV.
