Among the Believers

The documentary follows the network of religious schools built around the Red Mosque in Islamabad and what those schools teach children. At its centre is Abdul Aziz, the cleric who leads the mosque and who kept his influence after the mosque’s confrontation with the Pakistani army in 2007. The film has direct access to him and lets what he says stand without cutting it. Beside him it places two children, a boy and a girl moving along the religious and the secular tracks of education. The question stops being one about religion and becomes one about what happens when poor families are offered no other option for their children. The Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy also speaks. Hemal Trivedi and Mohammed Naqvi worked on it for five years; it premiered at Tribeca in 2015 and was banned in Pakistan by the censor board.