Documentary director Haya Fatima Iqbal, who has won an Oscar and two Emmys, is hot right now. At the 44th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, her short, As Far As They Can Run, was nominated for Outstanding Short Documentary. The video follows three intellectually disabled young adults from rural Pakistan as they are recruited for Pakistan’s Special Olympics Programme.
Haya made the announcement on Instagram. She shared the exciting news that “our film got nominated for an Emmy!” on Instagram. She continued, saying of her film, “The film follows the lives of children in and around Mirpurkhas who have intellectual disabilities and eventually receive training to become athletes.” It was a privilege to see the instructors pour their hearts into their jobs so that these kids could reach their full potential.
Haya was also pleased to announce that one of the film’s young protagonists, Sana Kapri, had the honour of lighting the torch during the Special Olympics in Berlin the previous month. Ghulam and Sajawal are two other characters whose experiences are told in As Far As They Can Run. Both were rejected by their own families and had to make do with meagre resources and few opportunities.
She shared a photo from 2018 with the film’s cinematographer, Nadir Siddiqui, in the hopes of reliving that “red carpet” moment. Let’s try to repeat our red carpet antics from last year with Nadir Siddiqui. She credited Nadir as the film’s cinematographer.
The Flagmakers by Sharon Liese and Cynthia Wade, Beirut Dreams in Colour by Michael Collins, The Sentence of Michael Thompson by Kyle Thrash and Haley Elizabeth Anderson, and MINK! by Ben Proudfoot as part of The New York Times’ Op-Docs are all examples of documentaries and news films that fall under the same genre.
In the category of Documentary Short Film at the 2022 Academy Awards, the film As Far As They Can, directed by Tanaz Eshaghian and produced by Christoph Jörg, was among the nominees. In 2018, Haya co-produced A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, a short that earned Pakistan the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
