Make it a Real / ایسے جیسے حقیقت

Make it Look Real / ایسے جیسے حقیقت
2024 | 68 mins | Digital Video | Color | 25fps

World Premiere: IDFA 2024, Luminous
European Premiere: Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival 2025
Belgian Premiere: Festival En Ville, Brussels 2025 (Opening Film)

Awards: Jury Prize - Belgian Film by Cinéma en ateliers (AAAPA)

Reviews:

Presentation Is as Important as the Story Being Told at True/False Film Fest 2025, Indie Wire
Documentary Review: Make It Look Real (2024) by Danial Shah, Asian Movie Pulse
True/False 2025: The Track, Writing Hawa, Make It Look Real, Roger Ebert
REVIEW: ‘Make It Look Real’ invites the audience into a cozy studio amidst an unforgiving world, The Maneater
True/False 2025: “The Wolves Always Come at Night,” “The Silence of My Hands,” “Make It Look Real”, Katie at the Movies
Le festival En ville ! ouvre sa nouvelle édition avec le singulier documentaire "Make it look real", RTBF

Countries of Production: Pakistan, Belgium, Netherlands
Language(s) and subtitles: Pashto, Urdu, Hazargi / St Fr, En
Editing: Sébastien Demeffe
Sound editing & mix: Thomas Ferrando.
Color Grading: Sujay Iyer

A production of Atelier Graphoui (BE), Videopower (NL), with the support of SIC – Sound Image Culture(BE)

Synopsis

“Make it look real,” the clients of a photo studio in Pakistan urge the photographer. They want a photo of themselves with girls, and preferably holding a gun or sitting on a motorcycle, even though they have none of these things. So their photos are pasted onto stock photos. In a sense, these studios are selling a lie, but at the same time the photos bring to light the dreams and ambitions of their clients.

Photojournalist and director Danial Shah focuses on the fake to reveal the real. While a photographer polishes away imperfections, they discuss why white skin is considered better than black. And amid the photoshopped images, the photographer shares his desire to flee the country, while he tells Shah about the genocide of the Hazaras.

One earns his living by making fake photos, the other sells realistic news photos to US newspapers such as The New York Times. Although the photographers and the filmmaker relate to reality in opposite ways, the boundaries between them begin to blur. They direct their cameras at each other and thus become the subject of each other’s work.