My family restores my sense of ease and keeps me balanced.

An Academy Award nomination is stuff dreams are made of.

I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to make socially conscious films. I never studied filmmaking - everything I have learned has been on the field.

Music is a universal language.

But the biggest challenge overall was narrowing down the complex narrative elements into a clean and straightforward story while maintaining a sense of the cultural context that makes the film special.

When the film and music industries declined in the wake of increasingly conservative Muslim laws and social customs in Pakistan, many of these musicians found themselves out of work. They were brought together at Sachal Studios by Izzat Majeed, who built the studio in order to preserve these musical traditions.

I feel that for the first time in a long time, educated Pakistanis are returning to their country to start up educational projects, to start up businesses, so instead of the brain-drain that happened in the 1950s and 1960s, the country is growing and improving economically.