The Glassworker is the first hand-drawn animated film produced in Pakistan. It won the Audience Award at the Asian World Film Festival in Culver City, which is where I saw it. Director Usman Riaz has quite a story to tell about how the film was made. If fact, there is an hour-and-a-half documentary about the making of the film: The Making of The Glassworker.
The story revolves around Vincent (Sacha Dhawan), whose father, Tomas (Art Malik), is an expert producer of glassworks and is teaching the craft to Vincent. One of the sidelights of the film is that is gives a detailed, yet easy to understand, explanation of how glass blowing is done.
A war, somewhere over there, breaks out, and an important military leader, Colonel Amano (Tony Jayawardena), arrives in Vincent’s apparently well-placed village. He brings with his daughter, Alliz (Anjli Mohindra), who is a budding violinist talent. Attracted by the glass works in the shop window, she introduces herself to Vincent, and the two soon become best friends. They are too young to have romantic interests, but that comes later.
As war fever-inspired patriotism builds, Tomas finds himself at odds with the rest of the village because he is a pacifist. He believes that innocent citizens of his country are being sent out to kill and be killed by innocent citizens of a neighboring country. As Tomas’ son, Vincent is harassed and bullied by boys whose fantasy is to go and fight.
As the war becomes more deadly, Colonel Amano forces Tomas to help make weapons for the war, which tears Tomas apart spiritually. Although Alliz supports Vincent, she is affianced to a young man who saves her father’s life in the war. Eventually she realizes that she, herself, is being treated as a “spoil of war.”
In his interview after the screening I attended, Usman Riaz explained that making a film in Pakistan about the politics of war is, to put it politely, a delicate venture. In 2024, one of my students was a young Pakistani woman who had never before met people from other countries. It was the first time she had learned that it was acceptable to express her opinions, something that is not really safe to do in Pakistan.
It took Riaz ten years to make The Glassworker, a journey that included creating an animation studio and teaching a large crew how to animate.
Moya O’Shea wrote the screenplay, based on a story she and Riaz created.
