- The chronicles of Manto, a famous Urdu novelist who opts to live in Lahore after the independence of Pakistan. He left Bombay because it wasn't safe anymore for Muslims, but his artistic choices made him face obscenity charges.
- The story of 20th-century writer "Manto", who grew up in the showbiz industry of Bombay (now Mumbai) and Lahore. It focuses the last seven years of his life during which he wrote some of his most controversial stories, such as "Thanda Gosht", "Toba Tek Singh", "Madari", and "Peshawar Se Lahore." For these Manto had to face charges of obscenity thrice.—Umair
- A story of a 20th-century writer "Manto", who grew-up in the showbiz industry of Bombay (now Mumbai) and Lahore. It focuses the last seven years of writers life during which he wrote some of his most controversial stories, such as Thanda Gosht, Toba Tek Singh, Madari and Peshawar Se Lahore. For which Manto had to face charges of obscenity thrice.—Umais Bin Sajjad
- Saadat Hassan Manto, the famous, legendary and controversial short story writer of the Sub-continent migrated to Pakistan in 1948 after the Partition and lived in Lahore till his sad and tragic death in 1955. This biopic begins with him in an asylum where he is being treated for alcoholism; his tormented and strained mind doesnt stop working and his pen flourishes to produce some of the greatest literature of the world. His angst, his agony, his nightmares, his hallucinations, his rebellion, his magic, his words, his characters, his stabs and his creative genius: nothing gets affected by the physical and the psychological pain he goes through. His contempt for the aristocracy, fundamentalism and extremism of all sorts keeps motivating him to use his fertile mind and the ferocious and untiring pen to write and write more and more. He is released from the asylum and he comes back to the mundane yet essential normal life that comprises of his family, friends, contemporaries, foes, politicians and villains. The prominent ones amongst these, including Noor Jehan, Shaukat Rizvi, Nazar Mohammed, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Shaukat Thanvi, Qudrat Ullah Shahab and his arch rival Chaudhary Mohammed Hussain keep weaving webs of complicated circumstances around him which not only affect his life in good and bad ways but also provide him the essential misery that keeps him going. While real life is nothing less than a roller coaster for him, his unconscious mind keeps playing with the sights and sounds around him.
This biopic doesnt intend to make a screen hero out of the legend that he already was and is, by over dramatizing or by blowing his persona up to a larger than life idea because he was larger and grander than we can possibly imagine; and that too despite all the human weaknesses and shortcomings. It is a journey through the last four and a half years of his life and just an attempt to try and feel how it is to be Manto..who still questions God about who the better story teller is.him or Him.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content