The Glassworker (2024) is an entirely hand-drawn Pakistani animated film that weaves a coming-of-age story with magical realism to convey a potent anti-war message. The promising directorial debut of Mano Animation Studios’ co-founder, Usman Riaz, employs an art style that is a clear homage to the classics of Japanese anime.
First teased at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2022, The Glassworker has since premiered globally, with an official English dub of the original Urdu dialogue.
However the film’s existence highlights the dearth of Pakistani animated films in contrast to the surfeit of live-action films that Lollywood produces every year. Animation is a uniquely time-consuming medium, requiring legions of artists familiar with a wide range of digital programs.
As such, animation has a much higher barrier to entry than live-action films, and accordingly, the market is dominated by a few major studios often concentrated in the U.S. and Japan. Artists from countries without an established animation industry often move to or join the global animation outsourcing industry, a common cost-cutting practice in which animators work on specific aspects of production on behalf of a foreign studio.
That Mano Animation Studios has successfully made its own animated film despite these perennial challenges stands as another achievement by Pakistan’s creative and tech-savvy youth.
