'' GHOST SCHOOLS '' GONGS : ICON FILM HONOURS SNIPPET

! ICON : HELD BACK IN CLASS ! : Writer-director-producer Seemab Gul's Ghost School takes on an important issue but is a very long, tiring one-dimensional message board.

IN British-Pakistani writer, director, producer  Seemab Gul's Ghost School, the world of interior Sindh [ Pakistan ] becomes a quiet question mark, and a screaming statement - especially when it comes to young girls' education and healthcare.

The problems are everywhere yet nowhere in the rural, sand-encrusted fishing village where Rabia [ Nazualiya Arsalan ] lives. The surroundings stir quite a lot of questions in the mind of the 10-year-old contemplative girl whose school closed down without notice.

Rumors of djinn taking over people and institutions spread with nonchalant normalcy, as if it's an everyday occurrence. Nobody notices the apparentness of it all.

Oddly Gul chooses to keep the various characters and family members nameless, addressed by Rabia only by their adopted professions or by their relationship to her.

The girls in her village are intelligent and docile and the boys are easily excitable and dumb barbarians [ one was expecting this ].

The school teacher [ Muhamaad Zamaan ] is nowhere to be found. When she tracks him down, the teacher and his wife are all ready to leave for the city as small-town politics have become too much for the couple.

The school principal [Adnaan Shah Tipu] -whom she also eventually tracks down - lives at the other end of the spectrum.

He believes education to be a privilege for the rich. Rabia, the daughter of of a fisherman and a housemaid [ played by Samina Seher ] shouldn't worry about learning.

After all, he says, what would landlords do if all fishermen and farmers educated themselves and left for a better life?

!WOW! thanks Mohammed Kamran Jawaid, DAWN.