Silent Waters

The traumatic internal violence that followed the 1947 partitioning of India into a brand-new country — Pakistan — comes back to haunt a Muslim widow in this rare, wrenching drama from Pakistani director Sabiha Sumer. Charkhi, Pakistan, 1979: Ayesha (Kirron Kher) is a devout Muslim widow who supports herself and her grown son, Saleem (Aamir Malik), by offering Koran lessons to the children of the village. At first, Saleem appears to be a fairly ordinary teenager who uses his daily visits to the mosque as a pretext to visit his girlfriend, Zubeida (Shilpa Shukla). The overthrow of Bhutto's government two years earlier by the Islamicist General Zia-ul Haq, and the subs...