We spoke with Danial Shah, director of Make it Look Real, about the making of his film, the possibilities of photography and positionality in filmmaking.
In his tiny photography studio in a busy mall in Pakistan, Muhammad Sakhi photoshops his clients’ fantasies into reality, with backdrops featuring cars, girls and stock photo friends. As he takes turns interviewing director Danial Shah, the easy bond between the two men reveals multitudes about image-making, aspiration and wish-fulfilment.
Read our interview with Danial Shah below.
How did the idea to structure the film around you and Sakhi interviewing each other emerge?
I started the film with the intention of being an observer, but during filming I realised that my presence, both behind the camera and in front of it, became important. At Sakhi’s and every other photo studio in the market, I was confronted with many questions about my life in Belgium, my camera, and my work as a photographer. I was also trying to understand my positionality as an insider or an outsider.
My initial drive to make this film was to explore the contradictory duality of the economics of image-making practice, a practice dominated by class-based aesthetics. Sakhi questioned me often, both while I was filming and when I was not and I felt it was important to be in the film, especially after Sakhi proposed that he would like to interview me as well. After all it was the interaction between two photographers who come from the same city but coming from different social backgrounds.
The film largely remains inside the photo studio, with subtle expansions into the mall. What drew you to contain the story within this environment?
From the start, I made a conscious choice that my creative limits in terms of space for this film will be the photo studio and Baldia Plaza (the mall where Sakhi’s photo studio existed).
The photo studios in Baldia Plaza form a kind of mirror of Quetta, my city. They mirror the social, political and economic inspirations and aspirations of the people. They are like a kaleidoscopic entrance into the political, geopolitical, historical and cultural visual worlds where history and possible realities are compressed with all their contradictions. It mirrors the religious, political, gender and all sorts of contradictions. The film also is an attempt to mirror the kaleidoscopic societal reality. I wanted the audience to imagine the city and its surroundings through the photo studio, photograph and sound. We keep hearing the city in the background and we see only a glimpse of it from Baldia Plaza.
You’re a photographer yourself. Has spending time with Sakhi and his clients changed your approach towards photography in any way?
I am a self-taught photographer and I grew up mostly with the idea of photography as something to do with reality or truth. Perhaps I was influenced by Euro-American centric documentary photographers and photojournalists. Sakhi is also a self-taught photographer who learnt it while working in the market. Our approaches to photography are completely different. I have to admit that Sakhi’s photo studio caters to clientele coming from lower income backgrounds and his studio and the photographs that come out of it are often looked down upon by people who belong to a social class that are a bit well off. Spending time with him helped me change my approach to photography. It made me start questioning my practice i.e. if photography has more to offer than just depiction of reality and truth that I often worked with. I learnt that in Sakhi’s photo studio, photographs testify as an act of becoming. It makes you reflect on the assumption that photography is about grasping reality, while here it is grounded in desires. The desire in this context is not oriented towards a specific place or time but points towards a possible or imagined future.
The photo studios offer a place for individuals to perform an identity that is not entirely there but is a certain wish to be a part of something. Here, the photograph functions differently from what Roland Barthes points towards, namely the ‘what-has-been’ function of photography. Barthes refers to photos as a reminder that time has passed, what we see in the photo existed once upon a time. Instead of what-has-been, here it is what-will-it-be, or what-one-wish-to-be in terms of projection of desires. Does that point towards the future? Of course, it is (the performance of) a desire at a particular moment in time. Working with Sakhi has also made my relationship with photography more difficult. I now question more than ever.
Have Sahki and his community seen the film? And if so, what was their reaction?
Before finalizing the film, I organized a rough-cut screening for the community in Quetta to gather their feedback. I was apprehensive that the film might exoticize this photographic practice, especially given my position in a European context i.e. being based in Belgium, working with Belgian and Dutch co-producers, and anticipating that the film would primarily reach Euro-American audiences. In short, the film is made in, and will be shown in, countries with a deep and brutal colonial history in relation to the East, countries with a long legacy of exoticizing and representing the East on their own terms.
Sakhi attended the screening but had little to say, except that he was uneasy about the audience hearing him use a curse word when he lashes out at human smugglers toward the end of the film. However, the Quetta audience responded differently, they understood and related to his anger, which brought him some comfort. Overall, the feedback was affirming. People felt that the film resonated with their understanding of the aesthetics and projections of desire embedded in these photographs.
The film later had its Pakistan premiere at the Chalta Phirta Doc Film Festival in Quetta in December 2025, with Sakhi present for the Q&A. It remains one of the most memorable screenings for me and Sakhi. Some audience members even spoke openly about their own desires and shared stories of the photos they had taken in studios like Sakhi’s. By then, Sakhi had closed his studio in August 2024, and watching himself in a space that no longer existed felt deeply nostalgic for him.
Make it Look Real screens from Saturday 14th February.