Adeel Hashmi

An offspring of a creative family, Adeel Hashmi has carved his own space in the media industry in Pakistan. He is a talented director, actor, and creative producer behind several TV shows, documentaries, and commercials.

Adeel's productions are considered to be "hutt ke", or atypical of the usual commercial formula productions that have become the norm on South Asian TV channels.

Adeel shares stories about his own life as well as his views on the state of media in Pakistan. Read on to learn more about this talented man!

Tell us a little bit about where you grew up, education and family?
I grew up in an old part of Lahore called Model Town. Model Town was designed by the British is the early 1920s. If you go to google earth and find Model Town, you'll know why it is perhaps the best designed residential area in the country even today.

There were old and big houses, with tall trees in every garden, everyone knew everyone else. All the neighbors' kids were our best pals. We grew up among two dozen friends of all ages. We played cricket, hockey, football, stone fighting, hide and seek, water fights, dark room, cards, monopoly, God knows what not. It was a dream childhood. Looking at kids today, it seems like I grew up in a dream. Yes, it was a dream childhood. Those were innocent times. There were hardly any cars. I don't remember if our main gate was ever locked, even at night. Nobody felt the need. We didn't even have walls around the houses, we only had bushes. It says so much about those times.

After finishing school in Model Town, I went to Government College Lahore like all my other family members. After my graduation I did my MBA from Imperial College, then a few years later MFA in filmmaking from Academy of Art University, San Francisco.

My mother worked for the Pakistan Television for 40 years. She's retired recently and still continues a prestigious career in the media, traveling, lecturing, chairing international conferences etc. My father is a practicing psychologist, and my brother is a psychiatrist and lives and works for a big hospital in Arkansas, USA.