An Australian ambulance paramedic, Benjamin Gilmour visited Pakistan with his girlfriend before September 11 and then in 2004/6 revisited a remote North West Frontier Province called Darra Adam Kel, in an isolated valley on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Gilmour’s idea in creating this film was to debunk many extreme ideas some of the West has about the nature of Islamic society. Living with the Pashtuns, in a tribal area south of Peshawar for almost a year allowed Gilmour to live with this much-maligned ethnic group, all too readily lumped into the “terrorist basket” (states Gilmour’s website for the film Son of a Lion).

Pashtuns are caught in the middle of defending their territory from foreign interference and resisting the violent militants and warmongers in their midst. Gilmour states he found them to be a freedom loving, generous and likeable people.

Gilmour also released his book, Warrior Poets in June this year. The book tells the story of the making of this film, which was an awesome undertaking in itself.

On his return visits the “executive producer”, (his friend who had shown him around on his first visit) assisted his work on the film undercover and in disguise, as a Pashtun, as Gilmore was working without a permit. He also assisted Gilmour by selecting local Pashtuns as the cast. Villagers from the local town of Kohat also assisted in this clandestine filming operation.

Remarkably, although the filming was limited by the handheld digital camera, limited film crew, and some scenes by necessity shot away from the centre of the small village, the remote, isolated and arid land is confrontingly harsh as you are hurled swiftly out of your comfort zone into a masculine dominated and warrior society of harsh proportions, far removed from Western realities.

It has the air of a documentary.

The cast are novices and as untrained non-professionals lend an authentic air to the simple storyline.

The story tells of a son of a gunsmith, an unwilling apprentice of his father, the lion of the film, an old mujahideen who wants his son to follow him into his trade. The eleven-year-old son Niaz, though, would rather go to school than learn to make and test weapons. The local industry is the handcrafting of firearms and has been since long before the war on terror.

A surprisingly softer side of life is depicted with the area’s obsession with poetry and music. This is illustrated as Niaz visits his mentor who is a poet at the refugee camp on the town’s fringe. Niaz has another ally also in his uncle who lives in Peshawar and who wants to enroll him in school in town.

Sher Alam, Niaz’s father also has friends who can understand his desire for an education. His traditionalist grandmother (one of two females in the film) does not offer him much support.

Eventually the boy musters the courage to tell his father that he does not want to follow him into his trade.

The film does not make a monster of the father but the narrative carefully leads to his understanding of his son’s desire to better himself
I found it a very interesting movie (slightly reminiscent of Kite Runner) and a real eye opener to the harshness of the arid and remote area depicted in NW Pakistan. The mountainous scenery underscored a tough and deregulated existence where “trying out” firearms in the street accepted as “normal practice”.

Eid, the celebrations marking the ending of Ramadan, were shown with an animal slaughtered in the open and then being divided and shared then cooked by family groups. It also showed the daily lives of these families (real family clans were used in the film) and the lack of opportunities and resources for the people which are quite astoundingly meager. Political commentary on the West, terrorism, Osama Bin Laden and war peppered the conversations of Niaz’s father and his friends in barber shops and teahouses.

An authentic socio political commentary, as the Financial Times UK‘s Nigel Andrews states “When not scarily enlightening...it is scarily funny”.