Khamosh Pani

Khamosh Pani Punjabi lit. Silent Waters is a 2003 FrenchGerman production about a widowed mother and her young son set in a late 1970s village in Punjab, Pakistan which is coming under radical influence.

The story opens in 1979 in the village of Charkhi in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Ayesha is a middleaged widow whose life is centred on her only son, the teenager Saleem, who is in love with Zubeida, a teenage village schoolgirl. Ayesha manages to support herself and her son with her late husbands pension and by giving lessons in the Quran to village girls. Generally wellliked and regarded, the only odd thing about Ayesha is that she refuses to go to the village well, having her neighbors daughters draw water for her. Some villagers such as Amin, the postman, are troubled by the recent hanging of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by the new military ruler, General ZiaulHaq, who has promised to enforce Islamic law and encourages Islamic missionary and political groups to spread Islamism across Pakistan. Two activists from an Islamist group come to the village and, supported by the village Choudhary landlord, start spreading their message of Islamic zealotry and gain recruits to fight the thenimpending Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The older men in the village react with disdain to their message of intolerance and puritanism, express cynicism at Zias continual postponement of democratic elections and are angered when the activists accuse them of being unIslamic and traitors. Although they struggle amongst the older village men, the activists soon gain a following amongst the village youth, including Saleem. With a mixture of cajoling and intimidation, the activists bring Saleem with them to a political meeting in Rawalpindi, where the speakers exhort their audience to commit themselves to jihad religious war for the creation of a true Islamic state in Pakistan. Drawn by their missionary zeal and call to serve Islam and Pakistan, Saleem, who wants to lead a more meaningful life than that of a simple village farmer, abandons Zubeida and grows estranged from his mother. Ayesha tries to discourage him from following the Islamists, but fails. Saleem parti

Source: Wikipedia