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Pulitzer Center Update December 5, 2012

"Outlawed in Pakistan" Selected for Sundance Film Festival

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Media file: Kainat%20-%20Pakistan-2.jpg
Kainat Soomro is a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who escaped an honor killing. Image by Hilke Schellmann. Pakistan, 2010.

"Outlawed in Pakistan," a documentary by Pulitzer Center grantees Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann is one of 15 short documentary films selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film will be screened in the Documentary Short Film category during the January 2013 Festival in Utah.

"Outlawed in Pakistan" follows the story Kainat Soomro, a Pakistani teenager, who accuses four men from her village of gang-raping her and then faces threats of honor killing. She takes her case to the Pakistani courts and confronts a deeply flawed criminal-justice system. The Pulitzer Center supported the underlying reporting project by Nosheen and Schellmann in Pakistan.

According to the Sundance Film Festival announcement, the 2013 Short Film program is comprised of 65 short films selected from a record 8,102 submissions (427 more than for the 2012 Festival). "The selections represent the immensely varied and dynamic approaches to storytelling that will inspire audiences with their huge accomplishments within a limited timeframe," Trevor Groth, director of programming for the Festival, said in the announcement. Other Short Film categories include US Narrative, International Narrative and Animated.

Nosheen is an award-winning journalist whose work highlights international women's issues. Schellmann is a video journalist for The Wall Street Journal. Previously they worked together on an investigative documentary special on surrogacy that aired on the Emmy-award winning show "NOW" on PBS in September 2009.

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival will be held from January 17-27 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

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