The Barred Window

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Summer 2007 - Northern Pakistan.</strong><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> A low booming echoes outside the barred window. The streets empty by evening cloaked in silence.  Soon enough the days become alive with screams gunshots and blasts from outside as militancy sweeps through the region.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Twelve-year-old Marleen and her headstrong cousin Naima are forbidden from leaving the estate. But as the summer advances Naima desperate to escape an unhappy childhood becomes increasingly reckless and secretive. Marleen eager to belong follows her lead.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>When a boy with a troubled past enters their world everything shifts.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the absence of Babajan who is away contesting the National Elections The Chess Society is formed</span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>.</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> What starts as juvenile amusement the result of mischievous children's minds becomes a social structure of strategy and power away from the world of adults. </span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The games gradually take a darker more macabre turn mirroring the escalating violence outside.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Week by week Marleen fights for her place within the hierarchy until one final act meant to prove herself pulls them from the sidelines to the centre of what they had been witnessing as protected bystanders.</span></p>