Say The Wrong Thing And It Could Mean Your Life: Documentary On Pakistan’s Extreme Blasphemy Law Goes For Emmy

deadline.com:

Pakistani-American documentary filmmaker and political activist Mohammad Ali Naqvi’s Primetime Emmy-nominated film The Accused: Damned or Devoted?

has been called a “scarily acute portrait of how religion and politics intersect” by the U.K.’s Telegraph. Nominated for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, the film is an explicit account of the rise of cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who has been on a mission to preserve Pakistan’s blasphemy laws that prescribe an inescapable death sentence for disrespecting the Prophet Muhammad, and life imprisonment for disgracing the Holy Quran.

In the film, Naqvi explores the cases of several people who have either been of accused of blasphemy or who have opposed the blasphemy laws – a group that includes Christian minorities, liberals, and opposing moderate Muslim voices.

The WORLD channel documentary is streaming on PBS Passport and Amazon Prime and aired on PBS stations in May. Naqvi was recently appointed chairman of the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee (PASC), which chooses the country’s official entry for the Oscars’ Best International Film category.