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He wanted to be a successful businessman like his father, but died at an early age after he was diagnosed HIV positive because of his drug addiction. This conceptual ‘HIV-9 minutes’ documentary has earned Grammar School’s ‘O’ Level II student Mir Sachal top prize in a World Population Foundation competition last week.
The powerful short documentary revolves around a young man, who becomes drug addict at a very young age. He watches his friends play tennis. Instead of involving himself in the healthy sporting activity, he stands behind the tennis court and collects drugs from one of his ‘friends’.
“Temporary temptations drive people into real life threatening situations,” said Mir Sachal, who wants to excel in the field of documentary filmmaking in future. The video gives a message to parents and teachers that they should raise awareness about HIV and AIDS among children. While the documentary is focused on drug addiction, Mir Sachal tried to collect data from various resources to enlighten viewers how HIV spreads.
“It (the documentary) basically talks about the main causes of this life-threatening disease,” Mir says.
“Awareness is required about keeping away from unsecured blood transfusions through non-sterilized surgical tools and syringes,” he added. However, Mir believes that most importantly people shy away from talking, discussing or asking questions about HIV or even accepting it as an “evil swallowing thousands of young people slowly and silently.”
In the documentary, the youngster finally dies in the hospital with two of his friends, who used to play tennis, standing by the bedside holding the youngster’s HIV positive report in their hands.
The first thing that flashbacks in the mind of the dying youngster was the tennis court where instead of playing the game he used to go to fetch drugs. “The whole concept of the documentary is basically asking the youth ‘why do we always have to learn it the hard way?” Mir said.
Mir’s friends and teachers in the school cooperated with him in making the documentary for the competition, but it came as a ‘big surprise’ to him when his film was shortlisted. “When the organizers told me that my documentary was shortlisted I was very excited,” Mir said. And eventually on December 17, 2007, he received his award from none other than renowned singer Ali Zafar.
