Umair Bilal films *As Light as Air* in Pakistan’s Sehwan shrine

Umair Bilal abandoned his original plan for his debut documentary “As Light as Air” after months in Sehwan, Pakistan, and decided to surrender to the rhythms of the shrine town instead. The Pakistani filmmaker had arrived with a scripted structure in mind, but every attempt to impose his logic on Sehwan felt like resistance. “I became part of its rhythm,” he told Variety. The film premieres in Locarno next month.

Sehwan is one of South Asia’s most intense spiritual hubs, home to the 800-year-old Shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. The town draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims during the annual urs festival, when devotees enter trance states through dhamaal, a whirling devotional dance. Bilal, who grew up in Karachi, wanted to document the music and madness, but found that the town’s chaos refused to fit any traditional documentary framework. He spent weeks sitting in the shrine courtyard, watching pilgrims surrender to sound and spirit, before realizing his film had to follow their lead.

The documentary now unfolds like a trance itself: no narration, no talking heads, just immersive footage of drumbeats, whirling bodies and whispered prayers. Cinematographer Haseebullah Jan filmed for 45 days, often in near darkness, capturing the glow of oil lamps and the blur of spinning dervishes. Early festival screenings left audiences unsettled and elated. One critic called it “a film that doesn’t just show a trance—it induces one.”

Bilal hopes the film will challenge Western audiences’ idea of documentary as control. He plans to release it online with subtitles in multiple languages, bypassing traditional distributors. “Sehwan taught me surrender,” he says. “Maybe the film can do the same.”