Jeremiah Birnbaum’s recent directorial venture, named ‘Torn’ is an 80 minute intense Drama featured movie that revolves around two families. Dendrie Taylor plays the role of a single suburban mother, who works hard to raises her only son. The other family however is a Pakistani couple, played by Faran Tahir and Mahnoor Baloch.
The story unravels around their bond when their teenage sons are killed in an explosion at a suburban mall only to discover one of their children is the prime suspect.
After which the drama transcends into a heated religious and ethnic stereotyping along with the groundless denunciation of the Pakistani teenager, killed in the blast. Police reports further hints towards the possible involvement of the Pakistani kid as the suicide bomber.
The writer of the movie, Michael Richter is a budding play writer. He promises the story line to be captivating and inspiring, that breaks through the social cliches.
The movie features Mahnoor Baloch, a prominent Pakistani born actress who has lived a good part of her life in America. Baloch started her career as a model and made her Pakistani Television debut in 1993.
Pakistan is in a phase of re-establishing its Silver Screen and Mahnoor Baloch has been a prominent part in the latest feature of Pakistani Cinema, named ‘Mai hoon Shahid Afridi’. “Torn” on the other hand remains to be Baloch’s first International venture, let alone the venture being of Hollywood.
Although the movie has not hit the box office yet, critics claim Mahnoor’s role to be intensely challenging and by the look of things in the cinematic trailers, she seems to have done justice to it. Mahnoor won national LUX Style Award for Best Actor in a leading role in 2011. After the recent release of ‘Waar’ Movie it seems like Pakistani cinema’s are going to revive and compete with the movies from abroad.
Also starring in the movie, is Faran Tahir – a familiar Pakistani face in Hollywood. He comes from a theatre family well-known in Pakistan and India. Both his parents are actors/directors/writers in Pakistan. Faran moved to Los Angeles in 1980, when he was 17 years old. Tahir made a name for himself in movies like Iron Man, Star Trek, Elysium and Charlie Wilson’s War.
The movie further includes John Heard, Sharon Washington and Patrick St. Esprit. The movie s scheduled to be released by the end of this year.
