Pakistani filmmaker Kamran Faiq’s short film The Last Glance has qualified for the 2028 Academy Awards longlist after winning the Jury Award for Best Short at the 21st Tasveer Film Festival in Seattle, it was reported on October 24, 2026.
What happened?
The film won at Tasveer, held from October 13 to 18, 2026. Tasveer is the world’s only Oscar-qualifying South Asian film festival, and Faiq said his film was the only one from the festival to qualify for the Oscars. He was clear about what the achievement means and what it does not: this is not a nomination, but a place in a longlist of roughly 200 qualifying shorts chosen from thousands submitted.
Key details
- The Last Glance follows Barkaat, a man fleeing violence with his pregnant wife and young son, who reaches a remote police checkpoint where a demand for loyalty forces a life-altering choice. The story draws from true events.
- Veteran actor Adnan Shah Tipu leads the cast as Barkaat, with Areej Ayub and Fahad Hashmi co-starring.
- Faiq wrote, produced and directed the film under Autumn Pictures, with Umer Peerzada producing, Khalid Saeed Khan as executive producer, and Mike McNamara and Armeena Rana Khan among the co-producers.
- The Tasveer victory builds on earlier festival success, including Best International Short Film at Canada’s Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival and a place among eight finalists for the short film programme at the Asian World Film Festival in Los Angeles.
- The team is already planning its awards campaign, including bringing an Oscar-nominated actor on board as an executive producer to represent the film at the Oscars.
What it means for people in Pakistan
For Pakistani cinema, the qualification is a rare bright spot for an industry that has long struggled with limited distribution and infrastructure: a short film made without a heavy budget has entered the first pool for official Academy nomination voting. For young filmmakers, it shows that festival strategy and raw storytelling can carry a project further than lavish budgets alone.
