Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s LALI is a darkly comic, colorful, and layered thriller in which ghosts walk among the living and prophecies weigh heavily on a young Punjabi married couple and their families.
The bride, Zeba, is a “cursed” woman, her three previous fiancés all dying mysteriously before marriage. She marries Sajawal in a vibrant wedding full of quirky family drama and humor. Beginning as an exuberant social satire, centered on the pressures and complications of marriage, sexuality, and family expectations, the tone and genre gradually shift, moving into a darker exploration of gender roles, jealousy, psychological horror, and the supernatural.
Khoosat also produced JOYLAND (Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize; 3rd i Festival 2023), and LALI is cut from the same creative cloth. There is notable crossover in the director-producer team, cast, and visual language, including the use of saturated colors and heightened atmosphere. Yet while the two films echo one another in theme and texture, LALI resists easy categorization, opening up a cinematic landscape rarely seen onscreen: vivid, emotionally heightened, and alive with ghosts both literal and social.
