JanjaalTussleAn award-winning Pakistani short film

Janjaal (Urdu: جنجال; English title: Tussle) is a 2024 Pakistani Urdu-language psychological thriller short film directed, edited and colour graded by Syed Asad Raza Abidi and produced by Faizan Ahmed under the banner of Cinegma Films. Written by Ameer Hamza with Basil Hussain Zaidi, it stars veteran actor Shamoon Abbasi, with Nazish Ali and Danish Irshad.

The 24-minute film was shot in just 34 hours, largely on Sunhera Beach on the coastal edge of Karachi, by a crew of film students from Indus University. It premiered theatrically at Arena Cinemas, Karachi on 5 January 2025 — a rare cinema release for a Pakistani student short — and went on to win 14 international awards and 22 official selections across 9 countries, including Best Short Film at the Toronto Fantasy/Sci-Fi Film Festival 2026.

Janjaal is one of the most awarded Pakistani short films in recent international festival history, and it is the film that launched Cinegma Films as an independent production house.

On the edge of the Arabian Sea, a fisherman survives a deadly boat incident and comes away with a mysterious golden pocket watch. The watch grants wishes — but each one is paid for. When Raza, a grieving police officer played by Shamoon Abbasi, turns to it in the hope of bringing his son back, he discovers just how dark its power is, and how far the price reaches.

The film belongs to the old tradition of cautionary wish stories — the kind in which getting exactly what you asked for is the worst thing that can happen. Janjaal sets that idea against a very Pakistani landscape: fishing boats stranded on the sand, an unforgiving coastline, and a family pulled apart by loss.

Themes

• Grief and desperation — how far a parent will go when faced with unbearable loss.
• Temptation and greed — the golden watch as a gift that cuts the hand that takes it.
• Fate and consequence — the film’s central question: what would you sacrifice to change fate?

Janjaal was made by students, on a student budget, against a university deadline — with cinema screens already booked for the premiere. The crew arrived at Sunhera Beach before dawn; the tide was supposed to reach the boats by 7 AM, and at 9:30 they were still on dry sand. The water came, the scene was shot, and the whole film was in the can in 34 hours. Syed Asad then directed the post himself: edit, colour grade, VFX and a 5.1 surround mix.

Read the full making-of story →