Pakistani film Wakhri opens in France, UK, Australia and Brazil this autumn

Wakhri, Iram Parveen Bilal's Pakistani thriller inspired by the life of Qandeel Baloch, is opening in four new markets this autumn: France, the UK and Ireland, Australia and Brazil, with North America and other territories expected over the coming months. Variety reported the deals as an exclusive on 11 October.

Variety describes the film as an award-winning thriller. It opened in Pakistani cinemas in January 2024, so this is a second life for it abroad, nearly three years on.

Where Wakhri is showing, country by country

• France (cinemas, October): Wakhri is among the first picks of Salon Indien, a new travelling film society devoted to South Asian women directors. The curatorial platform Contre-courants set it up with François-Xavier Durandy, and it will take its selections to venues around the country.
• UK and Ireland (TV and online, October): the film is part of Channel 4's 2026 South Asian Film Season, alongside "All We Imagine as Light" and "Songs of Forgotten Trees". Geo News reported that the season features nine films from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, with Wakhri broadcast on 5 October and then streaming online.
• Australia: public broadcaster SBS has acquired it.
• Brazil: the streaming platform Filmicca has picked it up.

For the large Pakistani community in Britain, the Channel 4 slot means the film is now free to watch at home rather than in a handful of festival screenings.

The story behind the film

Wakhri is drawn from Pakistani women who pushed back against the patriarchy, Qandeel Baloch above all. The social media star was murdered in 2016, a killing that put so-called honour crimes at the centre of a national debate.

The film follows Noor, a young widow trying to raise money to open a girls' school, played by Faryal Mehmood, and her cross-dressing best friend Gucchi, played by Gulshan Majeed. Both were first-time leads in a feature. Bilal wrote and directed it and co-produced it with Abid Aziz Merchant of Sanat Initiative and Apoorva Bakshi of Awedacious Originals.

What the makers said

Bilal told Variety that a French cinema run was "a dream come true", and that the team had waited for partners suited to "a film too special to fit a cookie-cutter distribution model."

Merchant said the story was about "the cost of a woman daring to take up space", a conversation that reaches well beyond Pakistan. Helene Kessous, who co-founded Salon Indien with Nemesis Srour, called the film "funny, defiant and necessary".

From Red Sea to Channel 4

The film's road has been long. It had its world premiere at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah in December 2023, was cleared by Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors on 4 December 2023 and opened in Pakistani cinemas on 5 January 2024. It then travelled through more festivals in 2024, Geo News reported.

Bilal is also a producer on another Pakistani project, "Dancers", which is at the Busan International Film Festival's Asian Project Market this month.

More film and drama news from Pakistan and beyond is on our entertainment desk.