By Anealla Safdar, Digital Department, DFI

Director Mira Nair’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a film based on Mohsin Hamid’s best-selling novel, enjoyed its world premiere at this year’s 69th Venice Film Festival.

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is the latest international film financed by Doha Film Institute. It is adapted by Bill Wheeler, Mohsin Hamid, and Ami Boghani.

The screening signifies a high honour in the industry – last year’s event opened with “The Ides of March.”

Shot in New York, Lahore and Istanbul, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is an exploration of bias and the phenomenon of globalisation that is both brilliant and unsettling.

In 2010, as student demonstrations rage in Lahore, a young Pakistani professor Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed) is interviewed by American journalist Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber). Princeton-educated Changez tells Lincoln of his past as a brilliant business analyst on Wall Street. He talks of the glittering future that lay before him, his mentor, Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland), and the beautiful and sophisticated Erica (Kate Hudson), with whom he was set to share that future.

The collegial pretense of the meeting in a Lahore tea house, between Lincoln and Changez, slowly gives way to why the unlikely pair is meeting on a summer day—a foreign professor has been kidnapped by extremists, and the clock is ticking toward the deadline for his execution. Changez’s family is being harassed and is in real danger. Bobby listens carefully, but with an agenda of his own.

The British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed, well known for his roles in “Four Lions,” “Britz” and “Ill Manors” plays Changez. Kate Hudson stars as Erica.

Other cast members include Kiefer Sutherland, Om Puri, Liev Schreiber and Pakistani model and singer Meesha Shafi.

DFI also sent some young students from Qatar to work on set in Delhi. Twenty-two year old Qatari student Noor Ahmed (Mass Communications at Qatar University) worked in the costume department.

“I love Mira Nair’s films. She’s the best director – the way she translates her ideas to actors was amazing,” she said. “I worked there in the costume department with the lighting. It was incredible to discover how much work goes into every detail.”

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” director Mira Nair

Speaking in October, Nair said: “My father lived in Lahore before the partition of India and Pakistan. I am inspired to make a contemporary film about Pakistan, especially in this day and age when the perceived schism between Islamists and the Western World becomes more pronounced each day.”

DFI, she added, is a “like-minded partner who shares a common belief in this story and its ability to affect change, having supported this project from the very beginning. In this day and age to have creative freedom to make a film that is political, timely and multi layered is a gift.”

Nair also directed the critically acclaimed films “Salaam Bombay!”, “Monsoon Wedding” and “The Namesake”