Son of a Lion

Son of a Lion is a 2007 AustralianPakistani drama film set in Darra Adam Khel, in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The film tells the story of Niaz Afridi Niaz Khan Shinwari, a Pashtun boy who wants to go to school instead of carrying on the family business of manufacturing firearms. The director, Benjamin Gilmour, is an Australian former paramedic Son of a Lion is his first film. It was filmed in the area around Darra with the cooperation of local residents. The actors are local nonprofessionals, and much of the dialogue is improvised. It has received generally positive reviews. The film is in Pashto with English subtitles.

Gilmour returned to Pakistan in 2005 and spent several months building up the network of contacts necessary to make the film, while teaching film at IQRA University in Lahore. Eventually Gilmour was introduced to Hayat Khan Shinwari, a landowner in the Darra area, who offered him protection and assistance in making the film. Khan Shinwari is credited as the films executive producer and assistant director.Foreigners were banned from entering Darra soon after theSeptember attacks, and Gilmour didnt apply for a permit to enter the area, expecting that none would be granted. Instead he filmed in secret, wearing a salwar kameez and a long beard to blend in. To minimize the chance of discovery by the Pakistani authorities or Islamist militants, Gilmour says that he used relatively safe places such as inside walled compounds, empty mountainsides and valleys to shoot many of the longer scenes with dialogue. This minimized the number of scenes we needed to shoot in the actual Darra bazaar. The film was shot on a small digital camera, again to limit the chance of detection. Son of a Lion cost slightly over 2,000 to film. The Australian Film Commission funded its postproduction. ........

Source: Wikipedia