Dukhtar

With its stark imagery and characterizations, the film often feels like a folktale, even though it takes place in the present and addresses ongoing social concerns.

Dukhtar grabs you from the outset and never lets go.

It is an unabashed love letter to Pakistan itself, warts and all. Yet, as a film, it's too by the book to earn a spot of honor in any book, and that's disappointing.

Its principal merit is the quiet authority of Ms. Mumtaz, who combines a mother's passionate concern with glimmers of an awakening consciousness.

Dukhtar is an issues film with the twisted, heart-pounding feel of a road-trip thriller ...

A depiction of the enduring mother-daughter bond as a Pakistani mother saves her daughter from an arranged marriage.

Heartfelt performances and breathtaking scenery barely compensate for the pedestrian screenplay's shortcomings.

Oddly enough, a plot similar to "Mad Max: Fury Road" but a million times more interesting--and by a first-time director, no less.

A gripping story from a place where women are less than second-class citizens that insists that they are, in fact, people who deserve to live as they please.

Writer-director Afia Nathaniel's Dukhtar is an unsentimental tribute to the transformative power of maternal love.

...a vital, urgent Pakistani film vibrating with life and truth... Rarely have I seen the mother-daughter bond depicted in the cinema with such candor and emotion.