Pakistan-China film on Karakoram Highway in the pipeline

BEIJING: A Pakistan-China film is in the pipeline, with a well-known actor Anees Qadir, according to a report published by China Economic Net (CEN).

Apart from being an actor, Anees is also working on his own film projects with Chinese partners. “The film will be about how Pakistan and China cooperate in the Karakoram Highway,” Anees told CEN, “If we start this movie, 40 percent of the shooting will be in China and 60 percent in Pakistan. It [The film] will be a big surprise for the people of both countries.”

The report narrates that, “It’s eight o’clock in the morning. Anees Qadir is sitting at an airport lounge in the northwestern city of Xi’an in China, waiting to board a plane to the southern city of Haikou in China.

With a script book in one hand, the Pakistani young man scribbled Pinyin upon the Chinese lines while looking up for new Chinese words on his phone as he recites the lines.

Starting out as a nautical engineering student at a top university in the northwestern city of Xi’an in China, Anees has always harboured the dream of becoming an actor.

“Before coming to China, I worked as a radio broadcaster in Pakistan,” the Pakistani actor told CEN, “And in that role, I wrote stories and characters and performed them in my own way in the radio…So I was acting in the radio [for a long time] ...”

Without attending any acting courses in a drama school, Anees learns acting by watching classic movies, and polishes his skills by practising scripts and filming and reviewing his own performance. “I don’t have the [acting] diploma actually, but I have the skills.”

After graduating in 2018, Anees landed a job as a model for advertisements and photography, during which time, he was approached by a film director and had the opportunity to try for an audition. “I sent him my profile and I got a small role. It was approximately 1 to 2 minutes. I performed that, but it was good for me,” said Anees.

Soon after the audition, Anees got his first role in a documentary film, and began to embark on his journey of acting.

Now nearly four years into the Chinese film industry, Anees has performed in five films and four TV series in China. And it is an arduous but rewarding process for the Pakistani actor.

“I had this quite challenging role as an action hero in a movie because I never learned kung fu…and I have no idea how to react in the fight because the co-actors just throw their fists in the air rather than on my face,” he noted, adding that “So I told the co-actors, if you hit me in the real, I will have the real expressions.”

The script poses another challenge. Since the lines are in Chinese, Anees has to first have them translated to understand the scene and the role before transforming them into Pinyin, the romanisation system for Standard Mandarin Chinese, to recite the lines.

But all the efforts are paying off. In his latest role, he worked with Yang Shuo and Jiang Xin, two well-known Chinese actors, in a TV series. “Yang Shuo and I have very good chemistry working together.

He was very nice and helped me a lot improve my skills.”