Pakistani actress, singer and model Meesha Shafi attended and performed at the official Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2012 screening of her cinematic debut venture, The Reluctant Fundamentalist [TRF] which opened the prestigious festival in Doha.
The fourth edition of the event featured a music performance by Meesha Shafi who was accompanied by her husband and musician Mahmood Rahman where the duo performed in front of a packed audience just before the screening of TRF to an audience including personalities such as Hollywood legend Robert De Niro. Meesha was later joined by the Qawwal Brothers Farid Ayaz and Abu Mohammad, for a collaborative performance featuring songs from the soundtrack of TRF.
At the screening, Meesha Shafi wore a custom designed white chiffon and silver lace couture gown by Cecilie Melli and carried a Swarovski clutch which she paired with a Dyrbeg/Kern bracelet and a polki solitaire ring by Amrapali. Meesha Shafi was styled by Oslo-based Stylist Amar Faiz.
With ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, Meesha made her cinematic Hollywood debut. An intense adaption of author Moshin Hamid’s bestseller and directed by the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair who handpicked Meesha for the movie, Meesha acted alongside Riz Ahmed, Kiefer Sutherland, Kate Hudson, Liev Schrieber, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri. The movie follows the story of Changez, an ambitious young man whose identity pivots between a glittering stockbroker career in the Big Apple and his home culture thousands of miles away in Lahore, Pakistan.
A multi-faceted personality, Meesha Shafi is one of Pakistan’s most edgy and exciting personalities, indeed a symbol of the modern day youth of Pakistan. Steeped in a family tradition of the arts, philosophy, culture and acting, Meesha is the daughter of veteran actress Saba Hameed and her ability to write is born from the legacy of her grandfather, Hameed Akhtar, a revolutionary Urdu writer who ran the ‘ Progressive writer’s movement’ for many years.
In 2010, Meesha Shafi launched her solo music career with a performance on the now global music platform, Coke Studio. Her session performance in collaboration with Pakistani folk legend Arif Lohar receiving over 10 million hits on Youtube alone making it the most viewed song ever exported by Pakistan. In 2012, she returned for another season of Coke Studio where she collaborated with the qawaal group the Chakwalis to come out with the seasons’ biggest hit.
Indeed she is also currently considered as one of Pakistan’s most sought after catwalk and print models’ – critics have credited Meesha for her personification of an effortless blend of East and West and she is hailed as a style icon with an avant garde sensibility, with the distinction of being the only Spokesperson for L’Oréal Paris in Pakistan for three years running. She is also a trained artist from the National College of Arts, one of South Asia’s leading art institutions’.
