Pakistani-American filmmaker Amman Abbasi, who grew up in the Paragould and Jonesboro area, then attended Hall High School and Central High School as a teenager, will premiere his 2024 film “Yasmeen’s Element” at this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin.
The festival described the hour-ish long film as follows:
Yasmeen is eager to learn. Inside the school, her hopes and ambitions expand, even as outside, opportunity begins to shrink. On this particular day, these two worlds collide. Her Professor gets pulled out of the classroom by an unknown military force, and briefly returns to give them their homework, each to give a presentation on a unique element from the periodic table. Once arriving home, Yasmeen realizes she’s lost her element. A day full of adventures and obstacles unfold as she urgently tries to track down her Professor’s house. Yasmeen is helped and sometimes hindered by those she encounters – a parable for what women’s education can be in an unstable place.
Amman Abbasi
Abbasi’s 2016 debut feature film “Dayveon” premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival and was then sold to FilmRise, a studio that gave it a theater release the following year.
His knack for storytelling and eye for cinematic framing might only be matched by his ear; Abbasi scored a film in the “Exorcist” franchise called “The Exorcist: Believer,” and writes music under his own name.
As for “Yasmeen’s Element,” it was made in Yunza Valley, Pakistan, and gets several showings at SXSW in March.
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