A child extends his skinny arms to place a warm, rust-coloured brick in a long line of freshly-baked blocks laid out to dry under the blistering sun that glares upon the kiln he has been slaving away at since the morning.

With six hours already gone by, there are eight more to go and around 100 more bricks to lug and stack into place.

As Awais approaches him, curious to get to know him, the child looks up in alarm and scampers away to go into hiding, afraid the police might show up and take him away from his job.

This is the story of just one of the 0.64 million children—as reported by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in 2023—whose plight and hardship prompted aspiring artist and filmmaker, Awais Shaukat, to tell their story through a hand-drawn animated short film titled, “Under the Blaze” which is expected to premiere next year.

The film will be a compilation of characters drawn on paper and digitally-painted backgrounds, presenting a compelling tale of children forced to trade their futures for the hazardous conditions of labouring in Punjab’s formidable brick kiln industry. With careful consideration towards each detail in the 24 frames that are to be painted for each second of the film, the animation style is meant to capture the viewer through its beautiful art and evoke an emotionally sensitive response at the same time.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Awais shared that the story for his film is inspired by his field visits to various brick kilns, where he observed the deplorable conditions and interviewed children who worked there, as well as their parents and some officials. “What I saw inside the kilns was totally different from what I thought goes on from the outside,” he said.

“I was able to learn about how the system fails in protecting these children and why authorities like the police don’t make a difference,” he explained. There are about 234 brick kilns in the Rawalpindi division and more than 7,000 in the Punjab province, which have continued to be on the radar for human rights violations.

The film hopes to bring the issue to light for a wider audience and prompt action.

The project is a testament to Pakistan’s growing animation industry, taking inspiration from Japanese-style storytelling and animation, with references such as the internationally acclaimed works of Makoto Shinkai and Studio Ghibli. In the wake of the recently, successful animated feature film, ‘The Glassworker’ by Mano Animation Studios, the short film shows promise of cementing the craft in the local context.

Awais Shaukat is a fine arts student and a painting major at NCA, whose vision is to carve a space for various art styles like hand-drawn animation in the Pakistani creative industry. The film is being produced by Rafhan Shaukat of Blacksmith Animation Studios.