KARACHI:
The brief movie ‘Display Locked’ has stepped past the partitions of conventional cinema and ignited a severe nationwide dialog about digital dependence, as policymakers, lecturers and cultural figures confront the rising mental-health dangers linked to display screen dependancy in fashionable life.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Khalid Hasan Khan, the manufacturing options famous actor Ali Khan alongside Atbaq Mohsin. Collectively they painting, with unflinching readability, the psychological toll that fashionable expertise and fixed connectivity can impose on human behaviour, relationships and emotional steadiness.
The movie’s central philosophy stresses the pressing want for conscious digital engagement, warning that the relentless chase for on-line validation, likes and digital identification has created a type of digital narcissism now reshaping society, notably amongst youthful and extra related populations.
‘Display Locked’ argues that true freedom within the twenty first century lies not in fixed attachment to units, however within the means to intentionally disconnect and reconnect with real-world relationships, lived expertise and internal consciousness, restoring a wholesome distance from expertise.
In an unprecedented transfer within the nation’s administrative coaching historical past, the Nationwide Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) in Karachi hosted a particular screening geared toward sensitising policymakers to the rising mental-health pressures rising from extreme display screen use and digital compulsion.
Talking on the session, Dr Syed Saifur Rehman described the movie as a well timed intervention on “a vital and delicate subject”, saying it provided “an ideal lesson about sustaining steadiness in life” at a second of speedy technological acceleration.
The screening went past a routine viewing. By means of structured suggestions, open dialogue and a question-and-answer section, the movie’s themes have been straight linked to psychological well being, civil-service decision-making and the standard of public service in an always-connected surroundings.
By late 2025, the movie had reached different mental circles. In Islamabad it was proven at The Black Gap, the place physicist and creator Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy moderated a centered dialogue analyzing the neurological and scientific results of steady digital stimulation.
Lahore adopted, with ‘Display Locked’ featured prominently on the Faculty of Tomorrow Occasions 2025 at Awa Backyard Marquee in late November. A large-ranging alternate between the director, actors, lecturers and intellectuals careworn that tackling display screen dependancy is a collective social responsibility.
By means of these various and influential screenings, ‘Display Locked’ has emerged as greater than a movie.
It has positioned itself as a catalyst for social reflection, urging each people and establishments to prioritise digital wellbeing, psychological steadiness and genuine human connection on the centre of public life.
