Kamli 2022

Hina Saba Qamar lives with her visually impaired sister-in-law Sakina Sania Saeed in a quiet neighborhood, while her husband Saqlain has been away in Bahrain for eight years in search of better prospects. She waits for his return, day after day, tending to Sakina and keeping routine life intact as the years stretch on. One day, along with a group of neighborhood girls, she visits Zeenat Nimra Bucha, a painter who uses the young women as muses for her art. Zeenat’s life feels unsettled; she and her husband Malik Nadir Omair Rana live without a child, and that tension rides just beneath the surface of their home.

Returning from Zeenat’s house, Hina slips into a lake and is pulled out by a mysterious man named Amaltas Hamza Khawaja. The moment they meet, an instant spark is kindled between them, and a deep connection grows as days pass. Hina finds herself spending most of her time with Amaltas, drawn into a relationship that feels both thrilling and dangerous, offering a sense of being seen after so long in limbo.

Back at Zeenat’s, an aalima speaks of social norms: a woman whose husband is unknown may remarry after four years of Iddah. This idea sparks anger in Sakina, who forbids Hina from working in her house and tightens the circle around her. Soon after, Zeenat returns with a marriage proposal for Hina from her own husband, setting off a cascade of accusations and fear. Sakina lashes out at Zeenat and, in a moment of desperation and suspicion, physically beats Hina, insisting that she has had an affair with Malik Nadir. The accusation exposes the fragility and suspicion that thread through each woman’s life.

Sakina decides to secure Hina’s future by arranging a marriage to Malik Sahab, and she reveals to Hina that Saqlain died in an accident shortly after leaving for Bahrain eight years earlier—a truth she has never fully come to terms with. To keep Hina from leaving, she locks the younger woman inside until the Iddah period ends. Frustration and longing ignite in Hina, and she sets the room on fire with kerosene, forcing Sakina to unlock the door. Hina escapes to elope with Amaltas, only to find his cabin empty and the painted handprints on the door from earlier years no longer there, revealing that he may never have been a real person.

Returning to Sakina, Hina rests her head on Sakina’s lap and asks her to tell the folk tale of Princess Harmala, a moment that threads together memory, myth, and survival. The house slowly burns as Zeenat quietly burns Polaroids, including Amaltas’s photos. Sakina begins to tell Harmala’s tale, while Hina walks toward a small balcony pool and sinks beneath the water in a slow, measured goodbye.

There are two ways to read the ending. In one interpretation, Hina imagined Amaltas, casting herself as the folk-tale figure Harmala, and recognizing that she could swim all along, even without save-or-rescue intervention. In the other interpretation, Amaltas is a ghost who appears to desperate women, offering hope and then vanishing; Sakina’s sense of his presence lingers, hinted at when she detects his scent on Hina, and Zeenat’s final act of burning his photos reinforces the idea that Amaltas never truly existed. The film thus leaves the audience with a haunting question about love, myth, and the power—and fragility—of hope.