Hala

Minhal Baig’s Hala is the coming of age story of a Pakistani-American teenage girl. At home, Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) tries to play the role of a dutiful Muslim daughter: she aids her father (Azad Khan) with the morning crossword, she dresses modestly, she prays. Yet, she also frequently bickers with her mother (Purbi Joshi) over her actions, over missing fajr, over skateboarding to school and over their strained relationship. At school, Hala is entirely different, writing beautiful poetry and secretly hanging out with a boy named Jesse (Jack Kilmer). After she discovers something that threatens to unravel her relationship with her parents, Hala’s two worlds begin to collide as she struggles to grapple with her sexual agency and familial obligations. 

Though not an autobiography, Baig based much of Hala on her own life experiences. With scenes that differed, the director would find herself asking if they were “emotionally true.” Hala is a deeply personal film, it is Hala coming to terms with her own cultural and religious observance and where she fits within the Pakistani-Muslim diaspora. Baig reflects this personal nature in how her characters interact with one another. In one scene, Hala is clothes shopping with her mother who insists Hala tries on the frumpy button-downs she keeps picking up. Initially, Hala refuses softly, not wanting to upset her mother or cause a scene in the story. Eventually, she gives in and bows to her mother’s will. Much of Hala’s scenes with her mother show the uncomfortable relationship the two have in their struggle to understand one another. 

Geraldine Viswanathan manages to quietly convey the emotional depths of Hala’s character by doing very little. She barely smiles through the runtime, as expressing emotion can be seen as a sign of weakness. For many of her scenes, Hala is by herself because the film is her story. The other characters exist for her to discover her self. With the opening scene, Hala is praying alone on her mat, with a quick cut to her masturbating alone in her bathtub. In arguments with her mother, she adamantly insists her mother is wrong about her but never raises her voice and often waits for her father to defend her. Viswanathan uses the intense silence between Hala’s characters to show how Hala is enduring her emotionally distant parents. It is this trait of her South Asian parents that cause Hala to lose her desire to connect with them, and Viswanathan channels this with her understated performance. Viswanathan’s performance is aided by Hala’s stunning score by Mandy Hoffman. With Hala’s recurring motif of poetry, the composer produces a dreamy, rhythmic score that matches Hala’s vulnerability.

First premiering at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Hala made its way around the festival circuit before having a limited theatrical release and finding a digital home on AppleTV+. When the film’s trailer first dropped, it was rocked with criticism over Hala’s relationship with Jesse, with many Muslims in the diaspora accusing it of being an orientalist love story or depicting a white saviour complex. Hala could not be farther from this — Hala is about Hala, not a boy. It is about Hala’s relationship with her mother, her culture and herself. Women of colour should be trusted to tell their own stories and stories like Hala’s need to be seen. In a year of Asian representation, Hala is a piece of specifically South Asian representation, showing promising signs for more Pakistani, Indian, Bengali, Sri Lankan and more stories to be told, because brown girls deserve to see themselves in film. While coming-of-age stories are universal, Hala will hold a special place in the hearts of South Asian girls and they will see pieces of themselves in Hala. 

HALA is streaming exclusively on Apple TV+