GEMFest '26 | We're Not Asking For It - Don't Be Late, Myra

*TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSES TOPIC OF S.A. & RAPE*

Back in 2020, I remember watching a news segment on the recent attack of yet another woman. This time, the victim was a young mother who was gang raped at the side of a highway in Lahore. Her kids witnessed the crime.

For the next few days, multiple news segments came out debating the complicity of the mother. People questioned why she chose to drive on such an isolated highway in the first place with no male companion. The entire debacle resulted in huge protests in Lahore regarding the safety of women.

I remember the horror and shock at hearing this news; it rippled through my household. It wasn't the first time we'd heard something like this happening, but it was an event that opened up discourse surrounding society's conditioning of women. The terms izzat (respect) or shaistagi (modesty/humility) marked my childhood. There was always this urgency or fear outlining the way that I should present myself. I still remember my teenage years where the greatest point of contention between my grandmother and me was whether I was allowed to wear shorts. It was a lengthy battle, taking up most of my adolescent years, but I wasn't the only one. Even in my high school, there was huge uproar over scrutiny of girl's clothing as opposed to boys. Later, at university, the same rhetoric came to haunt me when threats of sexual violence against girls during homecoming plagued the campus.

In adulthood, I don't think I can say anything has been resolved. Similar cases as the Lahore one still come up on the news; at my university, even the law couldn't help the girls with staying safe. The terms izzat and shaistagi are still being used as a way to put the onus on women. But at least there's more conversation.

At GEMFest this year, the short film, Don't Be Late, Myra, buries viewers in the consequence of being a girl. The short film takes place in the perspective of young Myra, who has to walk home alone after missing her bus. Very quickly, a simple walk turns into a battle of survival against men who stalk her every step.

An in-depth discussion with the talented director, Afia Nathaniel, gave me insight into the level of intentionality and care that was given to Myra's narrative.

You can't have a society that says, oh, we respect our women, and then you have gang rapes happening in the motorway where a mother was gang raped in front of her children, her young children. That really, for me, was a triggering event. Growing up with these stories of harassment, of violence, and experiencing that in my own life as a child, I was always very sensitive to these stories, but then when I heard the story of this particular mother, who was gang raped in front of her children, that really broke me. That broke me in many ways. It made me so angry. So I started writing "Don't be Late, Myra" as a film a few years back when this happened.

The conversation in the country around that incident was what was she doing so late at night? And again, it was about that victim blaming and shaming. I wanted to tell a story where I wanted to break the myth of what it means to be a girl who has to walk home alone. All is not well. We tend to talk about how society has progressed, but we have not really progressed. In some ways, we have regressed in our society.

Nathaniel highlights the effect of seemingly innocuous terminologies that differentiate the upbringing of boys versus girls. In Myra's story, the exploration of these terms was clear in the spaces that she filled and the clothes that she wore. It was clear in the way that she never met the eyes of any passing man. And, just like personal experience had shown Nathaniel, Myra was always unsafe.

I am from Lahore. I grew up in Lahore, and as one of three girls growing up in Lahore, in a, you know, very middle class setting. You don't really have the freedom to go out and explore the world like the boys can, right? Even the act of leaving home to step outside the threshold of your own door, you always have to have somebody with you and an older person, specifically a male. Growing up in such a setting, we were always told to make sure your sleeves are fully covered. Make sure your dupatta is correct, and make sure your shalwar is not, like, you know, the period stain is not gonna show through your shalwar when you step out of the home. So you were always tasked with these things about how you dress, how you look, how you talk. And when you step out of the house, you're not supposed to even meet the eyes of any males or strangers walking by.

So you were always conditioned to behave differently. And in a society that does differ in how it brings up its girls versus its boys, you find that this conditioning plays out in really dangerous and violent ways as children are growing up, and very quickly, the boys who become men realize that they can take advantage of this discrepancy in how society treats the girls. Just growing up in Lahore, you encounter this dual behaviour of how women are supposed to behave, how our girls are supposed to behave in both public and private spaces. And how, if something goes wrong, it must be your fault.

What I found most heartbreaking about Myra's story was the way in which all these spaces that are meant to protect her were constantly being violated by men. The terms izzat and shaistagi came to mind immediately; despite Myra's modest attire, despite the fact that she kept to the literal margins on screen, away from any eye, she was still constantly seen.

To me, Myra's journey is filled with silence, but there's an underlying violence, right? So how do I explore that in the frame? I love exploring tension in the frame through opposing movement. And, so you'll see that Myra, she's moving through space that's very crowded at times. There could be an empty street and then there's this rickshaw and it approaches her like a shark approaching its prey. I wanted to capture this sense that there is danger around every corner. And even as she's walking silently, we can sense it around her. So through sound, and through movement in the frame– even the traffic noise, it feels like an assault on the senses, right? She's trying to find her way back home, and this noise, it's like a living organism around her. And Myra, this quiet figure, is navigating this kind of violent traffic. So there's always these opposing things in the frame that create the sense of tension, [that] create[s] the sense that something is not quite right.

The problem is that nothing is right. Myra's walk through the city demonstrates exactly how pushing away a community off to the side, working to make them invisible, does not work. Myra is physically situated on the sides of the screen, away from the centre. Her dialogue is minimal. She is hidden in layers of clothes and a dupatta. She keeps her eyes down. Still, the rickshaw man eclipses her, penetrates into her space to prey on her vulnerability.

I'm just trying to centre her experience. As she's walking in that rickshaw scene, by herself, and not meeting his gaze, as she's being pestered by him, and he's kind of forceful in his arguments, I wanted to really centre her, even though she's not centre in the frame. So I let the action unfold in real time as she's walking. And, [as] the richshaw guy approaches her, we're seeing her first, and [then] the camera, ever so slightly, starts to bring him into the frame as the weight of this encounter imping[es] on her.

For many girls, walking home alone means that this is like a constant series of encounters you will have on these roads. And it's nonstop, you know? So I wanted you, the audience, to feel what it feels like if you were in her shoes. How would you feel in that moment? I want the audience to feel uncomfortable, because she is feeling uncomfortable.

True to her word, Don't Be Late, Myra elicits an acute sense of discomfort and anxiety that is hard to shed. It forces viewers to confront reality and how certain rhetorics can be normalized and passed down generations.

I wanted you to think that the problem might only be peripheral. It's in the outside world. But really, it's not. It's interconnected because the seat for violence is really rooted at home. ... So, what you see, you know, in terms of, in the public spaces, these boys on the bike, they also come from somebody's home. They have a mother, they have a sister, they have somebody at home. And where did they get this idea that it's okay to harass the women and the girls on the street? Like, surely that seed was planted somewhere in their own environment, their own personal environment where they were taught: it's okay, boys will be boys. So they have the permission to behave as they want because they do not have to face the consequences in the same way that girls have to face the consequences, right? So I was trying to connect these ideas that may seem to belong to two different spaces, but really they're interconnected.

And, I want to hold us, the audience, accountable for this behaviour. We are seeding this behaviour, so what can we do to arrest this kind of behaviour? And so for me, that's why the story of Myra kind of wrote itself, because it came from a place of anger and feeling helpless about this issue. Because I and my friends, we've lived through these experiences of violence, we understand that this behaviour starts at home. And the way that we can control this is also from the home. So unless we talk about it, in that way, in this interconnected way, we can never really address this issue of violence in a meaningful way.

As a filmmaker, Afia Nathaniel has worked hard to curate a portfolio of work that explores topics on women's rights. Her previous film, Dukhtar, tackles arranged child marriage. Although her films take place in Pakistan, Afia's work never feels inaccessible.

I mean, this is not just one country or one cultural issue. It pervades across geography, language and culture. Why do [women and girls] continue to be unsafe in so many spaces? Like we constantly are looking over our shoulders no matter where we are. We constantly have to think about how we present ourselves in public spaces. Statistics tell us that one in every five girls under the age of 18 will experience sexual violence in her lifetime. And that is not cool with me. That is a really high statistic. So what can we do as women? What can we do as society? What can we do as men and women and girls and boys? What can we do to help our children growing up to understand that it is not okay for girls to feel like this, or to experience this at such a young age?

The kind of mandate that I have as a filmmaker is sparking these conversations.

If you're attending GEMFest, I would say that Don't Be Late, Myra is the short film you cannot miss. You can purchase tickets here:

https://gemsvancouver.org/gemfest/