Neelofar: Fawad, Mahira Khan shine in an honest, thoughtfully imperfect film

At its heart, the film is a gentle love story between a man who can see and a woman who cannot, refusing to reduce her to her condition

- Sadiq Saleem

Across film history, stories centred on characters with physical or emotional disabilities have consistently resonated with audiences and award juries. Actors tackling such layered roles often enjoy a far higher likelihood of winning accolades. The pattern is clear: Audrey Hepburn's vulnerable blind heroine in Wait Until Dark, Angelina Jolie's volatile Lisa in Girl, Interrupted and Eddie Redmayne's meticulous Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything all earned top honors. In Bollywood, Naseeruddin Shah in Sparsh, Rani Mukherjee in Black and Priyanka Chopra Jonas in Burfi showed how mainstream stars can inhabit such roles when writing favours sensitivity over spectacle. Pakistani dramas have explored similar arcs, though sparingly. Shehnaz Sheikh's Zara in Tanhaiyaan and Madiha Shah in Sooraj Kay Saath Saath touched on physical and sensory challenges but occasionally leaned towards pity rather than nuance. For decades, South Asian screens have struggled with this balance, often resorting to clichés: exaggerated innocence, convenient tragedy or forced inspiration.

This is why Neelofar feels significant. It arrives when audiences expect honesty, not ornamentation, in depicting disability. Does Neelofar succeed? Partially.

Where Rani Mukherjee's Michelle in Black explicitly voices physical desire, Neelofar opts for subtlety: a shy cuddle in a cinema hall, a rooftop moment where she asks Fawad to describe her appearance. Simple gestures yet they carry unmistakable weight of desirability and yearning. At its heart, the film is a gentle love story between a man who can see and a woman who cannot, refusing to reduce her to her condition.