THE STORY – Ten‑year‑old Rabia defies rural superstition and bureaucratic neglect to uncover why her school abruptly closed. Untangling eerie rumors, corrupt local power, and silence, she undertakes a solitary, courageous search for truth and justice.
THE CAST – Nazualiya Arsalan, Samina Seher, Adnan Shah Tipu, Vajdaan Shah, Muhammad Zaman, Kehan Naqvi, Taha Khan, Ziarat Gul, Tariq Raja, Tutu Baba & Muhammad Zayan
THE TEAM – Seemab Gul (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 88 Minutes
My mother only just retired from over three decades in education where she taught all levels but primarily kindergarten (as well as first and second grade), but she spent at least a third of that period operating with perpetual exhaustion. If you have a teacher in your life, you understand, but if not, just imagine a season of “Survivor” where the contestants have no clue how the game works and Jeff Probst has to monitor the ongoings at camp, constantly repeat instructions, reprimand those who break the rules (despite them not knowing them because no one told them before they arrived), and lead them to each challenge, meal, reward, and tribal council, and then to the land of the “voted out” before running back to camp to do it all over again while hoping and praying that they didn’t burn it all to the ground while he was gone. And he also had to grade each contestant based on their individual performances and ability to work with others, and then call their families to deliver the news, good, bad, or in between. And there’s a cherry on top of this poo sundae: he gets to do it all over again tomorrow, and until at least Friday, but probably on his off days, too. It would make you want to retire at 29, let alone 58.
To be clear, Suzanne Bjarnar loved her career. She’s the most dedicated teacher I’ve ever known, and I’m absolutely saying that because she’s my mom, but also because it’s true. Still, it would be silly to dismiss the fact that these undertakings would take a heavy toll on any human, let alone the superheroes that make up the world’s instructorial ranks and those that assist them in gliding through their daily doses of Hell on Earth. Yet in these discussions, what emerges is a profound invisibility to the psyche of the student in these environments, a quality that’s regularly lost in the shuffle of the stress-dominant interactions with those who supervise and maintain classrooms. What is considerably – and most often – absent in these exchanges is how there are many, many young minds that want to be educated, who have a burning desire to learn about things that stretch beyond the bounds of their familiar environments, who wish to be informed about history, science, literature, sport, and the fundamental concept of communicating with others they’ve never met before. Without these directives, a profound powerlessness would fester in the soul and brain, one that lacks a sense of place and independence because they were never told how to obtain these necessary elements of existence.
That’s not necessarily the fault of the instructors. Their grievances tend to be more pressing and prevalent, and they know which students have intellectual drive and in which that trait has yet to percolate. As long as they’re attentive and committed themselves, it’s bound to show up in time. Seemab Gul’s “Ghost School,” the debut feature from the thoughtful British-Pakistani filmmaker whose teeth were cut in the short film space, examines the startling reality of what happens when said curiosities aren’t guided by educators, specifically in Pakistan, where thousands of “ghost schools” – schools that exist on paper and in theory, but not reality – leave millions of children without proper access to/hope for spaces in which they can learn. Starring Nazualiya Arsalan (a major discovery) as Rabia, a 10-year-old Pakistani girl who elects to investigate this lack of options in her village, Gul’s film is an at-times rudimentary yet ultimately probing examination of a genuine educational epidemic, a confident work that makes up for its repetitive conversational nature by propping up the desperation behind its heroine’s meaningful inquisition.
If it’s not entirely successful as a dramatic work, it’s quite triumphant as a vital work of activism. The former flaw has to do in part with Gul’s choice to make the school at the center of her narrative one that’s literally haunted, with spirits in the form of Jinns – ethereal ghouls that, to refer to the Arabic meaning of its source word, “janna,” or conceal themselves from human eyes by taking the forms of people and animals alike – mulling about the grounds as a means of driving interest away from their dwellings. Rabia and her mother (Samina Seher) have heard rumblings of the child’s teacher being sick, to which two of their fellow villagers note, “Sometimes our village seems cursed,” before flippantly recommending that she remain clear of the school so as not to fall under the spell of its black magic. Notably, they also mention that no Jinn exist in their household; couple that with the idea that these institutions are explicitly draped in dark sorcery, and you can see where the townsfolk fall on the issue of schooling in terms of its priority. Despite these urges, Rabia strides forward and from one in-town location to another, searches for answers regardless of the mass insistence on driving her thirst for knowledge into the dirt below her community’s surface.
Of course, the idea that these schools are literally cursed and overtaken by demons makes for a more compelling logline, though one wishes that Gul was more willing to split the difference between her central metaphor and a more realistic set of circumstances, one that she effortlessly toggles back to over time only to later return to the Jinn as her primary antagonist. During one interaction with a few of her village’s elder authorities, Rabia is shooed away with the assertion, “We all have our place… If everyone went to school, then [we’d] have barren land and empty fisheries.” It’s notable that “Ghost School” is primarily comprised of these sorts of connections between a curious minor and her steadfast, set-in-their-ways seniors, but the supernatural presence Gul establishes so early on perpetually existes on the periphery of the chatter, as if those “in charge” are wont to refer to it, but never to utter its name.
Voldemort this is not, so while the Jinn’s proximity remains a constant – and something of a foregone expectation of the film by the time it’s mentioned for the umpteenth time – the film would be arguably just as effective, if not more so, were it to lean more into the realism that is its foundation. It’s a complicated dilemma, and this critic is not one to decry a filmmaker’s choices in favor of his personal preferences, but “Ghost School” is a picture that’s eager to live the best of both worlds: one where its haunts are more material, and also one where a young woman’s concerns are met with the harsh dismissal of the men (and few women) she’s meant to be able to trust.
Combining the two should make for a compelling story with frights and pragmatic revelations abound, but Gul’s devotion to pulling narrative double duty hampers its depth – an enormous shame considering not only Gul’s background in documentary, but also how rich its textures are, from its lived-in-forever setting to Zamarin Wahdat’s gorgeous cinematography, complete with an expert’s framing ability and a distinct interest in color, one that’s particularly visible in its remarkable final sequence. “Ghost School” highlights such qualities thanks to the great deal of walking from one place to the next that occurs, and if Rabia were to press on despite constant rejection from her community’s superintendents and those alike – rather than from those exchanges to yet another maybe-encounter with a windy hallway that spells “GHOST!!!” – it would land with more resonance as a tale of a determined lass with big dreams and a stubborn nature who refuses to quit no matter how many times she’s explicitly told to. Instead, it leans on its allegorical pillar like a crutch when it would be fine making the journey on its own two feet.
