“Gul Makai is more of an origin story about how Malala used the alias Gul Makai for her BBC blog about living under the threat of the Taliban and the importance of education for all. Gul Makai is well-intentioned but as a film, it flails about, overusing background music, abruptly ending scenes, not convincingly recreating an environment and shortchanging its subject. The script feels like a compilation of information culled from news clippings, Wikipedia, and books on Malala. Best to go straight to the source material and bypass this ennui.”
“Amjad Khan’s <em>Gul Makai</em> doesn’t even attempt to flesh out its young heroine. We are promised a biopic and instead we get a hack job about an overwrought teenager, her saintly father, evil terrorists with carrot-coloured beards who stack assault weapons alongside their copies of the Quran, and Anant Joag as former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. Various other Mumbai actors attempt to pass themselves off as Pakistanis in this Bollywood version of events. Malala is portrayed by television actor Reem Shaikh, but instead of the brave and outspoken teenager who went on to become a poster child in the fight against religious fundamentalism, we get a bundle of nerves who weeps frequently and wakes up screaming from nightmares.”
Nandini Ramnath, Scroll
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