Pakistan’s cinematic response to Dhurandhar was supposed to be a statement. Instead, Mera Lyari became a case study in what happens when political messaging tries to use box office culture as its vehicle.
Directed by Abu Aleeha and starring Ayesha Omar, Dananeer Mobeen and Samia Mumtaz, Mera Lyari released in Pakistani theatres on May 8, 2026. The film’s story centres on girls from the Lyari neighbourhood of Karachi fighting against social constraints to find their place in the world. A sports drama rooted in local identity, it was, by its director’s own account, completed three months before Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar even released a teaser.
Yet politics has a way of rewriting authorial intent. Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon publicly framed Mera Lyari as Pakistan’s reply to what he called ‘negative propaganda’ from the Indian film industry. He declared that the film would present ‘the real image of Lyari: peace, prosperity, and pride.’ The statement generated exactly the kind of press that turns a small local film into a flashpoint.
The box office told a different story. According to media reports, Mera Lyari sold 22 tickets on its opening day. Not 22,000. Not 22 shows. Twenty-two individual tickets. Several theatres pulled the film on the same day it opened, replacing its slots with productions that actually drew audiences.
The contrast with Dhurandhar could hardly be more severe. The Ranveer Singh starrer, directed by Aditya Dhar, posted a global lifetime collection exceeding Rs 1,307 crore and spawned a sequel, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, which has already crossed Rs 1,800 crore worldwide to become one of the highest-grossing Indian films ever made. Ironically, Dhurandhar was banned in Pakistan, yet pirated versions circulated widely there, generating the very discourse that led to demands for a cinematic counter-response.
Abu Aleeha himself had clarified well before the film’s release that Mera Lyari was never conceived as a reply to Dhurandhar. The timing was coincidence. The political appropriation of his film was not something he invited. But once a minister declares your film a national rebuttal, the audience holds it to that standard, and a quiet local drama about girls in Karachi has no chance of surviving that framing.
The episode surfaces a broader observation about the relationship between political ownership and artistic outcomes. When governments or public figures co-opt creative work for ideological positioning, they set expectations the work was never designed to meet. Mera Lyari was not built to be a counter-punch to a Rs 1,300-crore franchise. It was a film with a local story to tell.
What it became, instead, was a viral symbol of overreach: 22 tickets, pulled from theatres within 24 hours, and a lesson that no press release can substitute for an audience that actually wants to show up.
