Badar Munir, the legend of Pashto films got his fame from this historical film. This folk film ran on the big screen for 12 weeks straight and earned itself good popularity in the history of the cinema industry of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Pashto cinema industry started its golden era in 1970 when the first film Yousaf Khan Ao Sherbano (a love story of Pashto folklore) appeared on the cinema screen of Peshawar in the December of that year. Since he is no more with us and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa film industry suffered a huge loss after his death, it further awaits a dark future due to various hurdles and difficulties. There was a time when viewers from across the border traveled to Peshawar to watch the classic dialogues of Badar Munir counted in the pioneers of the Pashto film industry. My mind was stuck in history as it recalled memories of various folk Pashto films directed and scripted by the talented faces of the province. With most of the Pashto films now highlighting scenes of violence as well as anti-cultural elements, families ignore to watch such movies there was no single female viewer or family inside the hall, but instead were aged and young viewers enjoying their cold drinks while some smoked hashish without any fear of screaming on romantic dialogues that would appear through the movie.
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Passing through the empty chairs at one of the famous cinemas of Peshawar, Arshad cinema, viewers of the new Pashto film Badnam (2017) of legendry actor Arbaz Khan did not amount to more than two dozen as the shadow of the bomb blast still lurks over the cinema industry of Peshawar.