Award of Merit – Zainab’s Legacy (UK)

Title: Zainab’s Legacy
Runtime: 25 min
Country: USA
Director: Owen Kean
Placement: Award of Merit
Competition: March, 2021

Synopsis: A grief-stricken father seeks justice after his seven-year-old daughter is raped and murdered in Pakistan.

In January 2018, seven-year-old Zainab Ansari was raped and murdered. Her body was discovered on a rubbish heap in Kasur, Pakistan’s “child abuse capital”, sparking national outrage that reverberated across the world. Zainab’s father, Amin, channelled his grief into a fight for justice and demanded systemic change. Two years later, the government of Pakistan passed the “Zainab Alert Bill”, a child protection law that mandates changes including faster police response to reports of missing children. But, as the number of reported child abuse cases rises, Amin wonders what justice really means.