The 19-year-old who self-funded a Spider-Man film in Pakistan

From Quetta to a camera at grade six

The episode opens with Muzamil introducing Saboor Akram as someone whose Instagram work stopped him cold — “some of the most cutting-edge post-production that I’ve seen in recent times.” Saboor is nineteen at the time of recording, originally from Quetta, raised in Lahore after his family relocated for his father’s business.

His entry into photography was almost accidental. At grade six, around age twelve, he started photographing school debating competitions — not because anyone asked him to, but out of pure curiosity about how things worked and why mistakes happened. Word spread. By grade eight he was the media director for his school’s Model United Nations events, winning university-level competitions at LUMS and BNU. His father’s plan had always been LUMS for computer science. Saboor’s plan, for a long time, was to go along with that.

The shift came in O levels, when a school counsellor asked him a simple question: had he ever considered doing the camera thing seriously? “For two minutes I was just trying to soak in — like, can I do this?” He went home and asked his parents. His father’s first instinct was caution: keep photography as a side pursuit, do CS first. Saboor’s counter-offer was to prove it. He started entering competitions, and the proof arrived not from him but from the people around him — friends would call his parents unprompted to say they had watched Saboor work and were genuinely surprised. His parents became, as he put it, “cheerleading front row.”

First money, first client, first real job

Saboor’s first paid work came through a friend whose contact had just opened a restaurant. He made a short video for a burger competition. They offered to pay him. He said fine. “3,500 rupees came into the house and I was so happy — I noted it to everyone.” That was the beginning.

From there he assisted a wedding photographer — his uncle, known as Rangi Ji — and kept doing experimental work on the side. By the end of 2018 he had done a lot of free work. Then Courts, the clothing brand, approached him through a family connection. They wanted a full women’s collection campaign: catalog photography, a website shoot, and an outdoor campaign on Mall Road in Lahore. “I got a huge sum of money and I got a lot of experience.” The campaign worked. People started following him. Something was clearly happening.

How a thirty-second idea became a thirteen-minute film

Saboor watched Spider-Man: No Way Home in cinema seven or eight times. The first viewing was pure excitement. The second he started watching the visuals. The third he was taking mental notes on the story. By the fourth he was cataloguing flaws and asking himself whether he could do something with them.

He had friends from NCA — Faiq and Hussain — and an idea forming: no one had made a genuinely good action sequence in Pakistani fan content. What if he wore a costume and choreographed something? Thirty seconds, basic, just to see. He calculated the minimum budget at around 40,000 rupees for location, actors, and equipment. “I was so glad that the people who were becoming a part of it were so talented.”

The thirty seconds became thirteen minutes. Then came a decision that surprised even Saboor: why not screen it in a cinema? He applied to the censor board. He got approval. “Proud moment for me — chalo, khud banate banate, khud hi karte karte, itni cheez ban gayi.” He screened it at QSNMS. He stood in front of the screen watching it play. When he walked out, people asked what he was thinking. “I am done with this movie now,” he said. He had already moved on.

The censor board experience itself was telling. Officials tried to find something to cut — not because anything was wrong, but because a new kind of content made them nervous. “Unka ek dar jaata hai — ye nayi cheez aa gayi, ab isko kaise treat karein?” Nothing was cut. The film screened intact.

Why Turkey, not New York

Saboor had applied to NCA for film. He didn’t get in on open merit — a disappointment he felt mainly because he worried he had let his parents down, not because he believed NCA was the right place. His interview ran thirty to forty minutes when the slot was five. The conversation was good. But sitting there, he was already calculating: he was already working alongside NCA and NBNA graduates in the same saturated Lahore market. What would four more years there actually change?

His long-term aim is Hollywood. He is clear about that. He cites Arooj Aftab winning a Grammy and Sharmeen Obaid winning Oscars as evidence that the path runs through being inside those industries, not studying them from a distance. “The reason these people are winning Oscars and Grammys is solely because they are working in that industry.”

So why Turkey and not the US directly? “Why take the straight route? Why not go and struggle first?” Turkey’s drama industry was building fast — Ertugrul, Osman, Magnificent Century. It has an international film school. It would give him four years inside a different culture and a different industry before he moves to the US for a master’s degree. The logic was deliberate: conquer two things side by side rather than jumping straight to the hardest one.

What is actually wrong with Pakistan’s film industry

Later in the discussion, Muzamil asks Saboor for a fresh perspective on why the Pakistani film industry doesn’t work. Saboor’s answer is direct: producers don’t take risks because they don’t need to. “Inko pata hai ke ek romantic film banayenge toh unke paas paise aayenge. Inko pata hai ke ek women ko sexualize karenge with an item song toh unko pata paise aayenge.” The formula works well enough that no one is forced to try anything else.

Muzamil pushes back with nuance. He points out that Laal Kabootar and Cake both proved that different, quality-driven Pakistani films can find an audience — and neither was banned. The problem, he argues, is not that the censor board kills innovation or that Indian competition makes Pakistani films unviable. The problem is that the upper-middle class, which loudly complains about the state of Pakistani cinema, did not actually go to the cinema to watch those films. “Paiintees, chaalees percent Pakistan aata hai — aur woh Pakistan jo hai, woh sahi numbers drive karta hai. Question mera aakhir mein yeh aata hai ke us Pakistani ki kahaani kaun suna raha hai?”

Saboor agrees, and adds a layer: the talent exists, but the energy to actually start does not. “Yahaan par kaafi log baithe honge, scripts ready honge, video ke ideas ready honge — lekin ek woh hai, I don’t know, ek feeling hai ke they just get up and they start doing it — woh nahin karte.”

The two also take apart the censor board argument by pointing to Iranian cinema — one of the most censored film industries in the world, and one of the most artistically celebrated. Censorship alone does not explain failure.

The infrastructure problem no one wants to talk about

The conversation moves to what Muzamil calls a scientific rather than emotional approach to diagnosing the industry. His argument: Pakistan does not yet have a functioning OTT platform with a working payment gateway and a subscriber base large enough to sustain production. Until that infrastructure exists, no amount of creative ambition will build an industry. “Hum Christopher Nolan ko bhi Pakistan le aayein aur poori Hollywood ko Pakistan le aayein — woh bhi ek film bana lenge — toh woh justify nahin karegi Pakistan mein, kyunki industry exist nahin karti.”

Saboor had run a version of this analysis himself. He had mapped consumer behaviour across India, Turkey, the UK, and the US, tracked the evolution of digital consumption in each market, and extrapolated forward. His conclusion: by 2023, Pakistan would have an actively podcast-watching audience. The infrastructure was coming. The question was whether the creative community would be ready when it arrived.

On comparing Pakistan to India: Muzamil’s point is blunt. Just Google the number of cinemas in each country. Even if every Pakistani cinema sold out every show, the raw numbers make direct competition impossible right now. The answer is not to compete — it is to build the infrastructure first.

Storytelling, relatability, and the trap of social media comparison

By the end of the conversation, the discussion turns to what actually makes stories work. Saboor’s view is simple: “Woh ek cheez badi hai — relatability. Bas.” You can have perfect visuals and clean sound design and viewers will still leave after two minutes if they cannot connect. Muzamil agrees and goes further: no artist is entitled to the attention of their audience. “You provide the value to them and they will stick. The day you stop providing value they will go away and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

Saboor connects this to his own shift in mindset. He used to watch other artists on Instagram and feel the pull of comparison. Then he noticed something: “Jo Instagram par bahut perfect banda hota tha, peeche woh sabse depressed banda hota.” People post when they need attention, not when they are doing well. The platform rewards positivity and suppresses negativity algorithmically. Once he understood that, he stopped comparing his growth to anyone else’s. “Chahe woh alag ho — I think yeh generally bahut cheez matter karni chahiye.”

Pakistan in 2050

Muzamil closes every episode with a version of the same question: how do you see Pakistan twenty-eight years from now? Saboor’s answer is the most honest moment of the conversation. Two years ago he would have had a confident answer. Now he does not. “I am super confused at the fact — will Pakistan even be there for the next three years?” He is not being dramatic. He is describing a genuine state of uncertainty that he says many people around him share. “Log upscared hain. At this point they’re really scared because you don’t know.”

It is a striking note to end on from someone who has spent the entire conversation building plans — Turkey, then the US, then Hollywood, then an era film set in the subcontinent’s pre-Partition history. The ambition is intact. The confidence in the ground beneath it is not.