Lali will open the 21st Tasveer Film Festival, according to Variety’s announcement. For Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s Berlinale title, the selection creates another opportunity for audiences to encounter a marriage story in which attraction competes with suspicion and family history presses against the present.
The most compelling way into this film is through its central couple. Zeba enters marriage carrying a reputation imposed on her; Sajawal brings insecurities that complicate his relationship with her. Their predicament raises an uncomfortable question: how can two people discover each other when everyone already has a story about who they are?
Story spoilers follow. This is a character-focused festival preview grounded in published synopses and filmmaker interviews, rather than a screening-based verdict on the finished film.
Zeba: When Bereavement Becomes an Accusation
The film’s published synopsis establishes that Zeba’s previous suitors died before marriage, leaving her associated with a supposed curse. Newly married to Sajawal, she finds support in her mother-in-law, Sohni Ammi, and her neighbor, Bholi. Those relationships provide an essential counterweight to the couple’s increasingly troubled intimacy. [Festival Scope’s film synopsis](https://pro.festivalscope.com/film/lali)
Read from Zeba’s perspective, the premise is cruel before anything supernatural enters it. Loss has become evidence against the person who survived. Her future is burdened by other people’s explanations of her past, leaving her to navigate a marriage in which ordinary uncertainty can acquire an ominous meaning.
That distinction matters for viewers. A character being called cursed does not establish that she is dangerous. Accepting the accusation too quickly means adopting the assumptions that already constrain her. A more revealing approach is to notice who repeats the claim, what authority it gives them, and whether Zeba gets room to describe herself.
Her search for connection also prevents this from being merely an abstract argument about superstition. Companionship has practical value when a household becomes difficult to navigate. Someone willing to listen can interrupt the isolation that makes an accusation feel like an inescapable truth.
Sajawal: Understanding Insecurity Without Excusing Harm
Khoosat’s comments about Sajawal place desire and unease close together. In his Outlook interview, the director describes a man shaped by a formidable mother, attracted to Zeba’s strength while carrying unresolved psychological wounds into their relationship. He also discusses intimacy as something that can express affection, grief, anger, or trauma. [Khoosat’s interview with Outlook](https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/interview/berlinale-2026-sarmad-sultan-khoosat-interview-on-lali)
That framework suggests a useful distinction between wanting a partner and being able to accept her independence. Attraction does not automatically produce generosity. A person can welcome another’s confidence while finding the loss of control that accompanies closeness frightening.
For character analysis, the crucial issue is what Sajawal does with that fear. An explanation of his insecurity can deepen our understanding without settling the question of responsibility. Pain becomes ethically significant when someone passes it on, making another person manage emotions they did not create.
This is also where a marriage story becomes more unsettling than a straightforward account of incompatible personalities. If affection and intimidation occupy the same relationship, moments of warmth can complicate the experience of harm. The viewer has to hold both realities in view without letting one erase the other.
Sohni Ammi Complicates the Family Picture
In Filmmaker, Khoosat explains that he wanted to move away from the familiar antagonism between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. He describes Sohni Ammi’s relationship with Zeba as warm, while acknowledging the older woman’s contradictions around superstition. The same interview connects Sajawal’s difficulties to his relationship with his mother. [Khoosat’s conversation with Filmmaker](https://filmmakermagazine.com/133347-interview-sarmad-sultan-khoosat-lali-berlinale-2026/)
That combination is more interesting than assigning each family member a fixed moral function. Sohni Ammi can matter differently to her son and to his wife. A source of pressure in one relationship may offer companionship in another. Recognizing those differences gives the household texture without requiring anyone to become perfectly consistent.
Her contradictions also offer a way to think about belief. People do not always divide neatly into rational skeptics and committed believers. A person may reject one superstition while holding tightly to another, especially when a ritual is entangled with memory, reassurance, or attachment.
Zeba’s relationships with other women therefore deserve close attention alongside the marriage. As our discussion of friendship’s role in understanding a romantic story argues, the connections surrounding a couple can reveal needs that romance alone cannot meet.
Why the Shifts in Tone Matter
Khoosat has openly resisted reducing Lali to a tidy description. Speaking to Scroll, he characterized its ingredients as “music and colour and ghosts and graves.” He also explained that the film’s perspective moved toward Zeba during editing, while stressing his interest in preserving Sajawal’s complexity. [Khoosat’s interview with Scroll](https://scroll.in/reel/1092365/scroll_in)
Those comments invite attention to perspective as well as genre. A scene can change meaning depending on whose uncertainty organizes it. What feels absurd from outside a household may feel threatening to someone who cannot easily leave it. Humor and fear can consequently arise from the same imbalance of power.
Whether those transitions work as cinema remains a question for a screening-based review. Their intended function, however, is worth considering: tonal instability may ask viewers to reconsider an earlier laugh once its emotional cost becomes clearer. The useful test is whether a shift reveals more about the characters.
What Lali Brings to Tasveer’s Opening Spotlight
The opening selection gives these intimate conflicts a prominent setting for discussion. Festival credentials can draw attention, but the lasting interest lies in how the film distributes sympathy, agency, and responsibility among people whose needs collide.
For viewers preparing to watch, three questions offer a productive starting point: when does Zeba get to define her own experience; when does Sajawal turn vulnerability outward; and how does Sohni Ammi’s affection coexist with the pressures of family life? These questions build on our broader examination of how character perspective gives festival cinema its impact.
The deeper interpretive possibility is that a haunting can be social as well as supernatural. A reputation survives repeated telling; an old wound shapes a new relationship; a family’s explanation becomes harder to challenge than the event itself. Approached through its characters, Lali asks us to consider how much of a marriage belongs to the people inside it—and how much has already been claimed by stories they inherited.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: September 26, 2026 at 10:10:09 PDT (Los Angeles time)
