Aneel Ahmad's short film Checkpost could be described as a political thriller. It is masterful in the way it both builds tension and raises important political questions in the space of a brief narrative.
The first few minutes of the film are tense and intriguing, as the viewer wonders how the three narratives, centring around three very different protagonists, will intertwine. One character is an ambitious but morally dubious British journalist. The second a Pakistani truck driver going about his daily business in the company of his young son. The third is a British documentary filmmaker on location in Lahore. When the pivotal moment of film, an assassination, finally comes, the tension breaks and the pace of the film changes to one of panic and confusion. Clever camera work, precise editing, and a perfectly-pitched musical score are used first to hold the viewer's interest, and then to capture the chaos of the film's dramatic denouement.
The Machiavellian actions of the journalist raise questions about media ethics in an age where the media doesn't just report on a story, but defines what is and what is not newsworthy. The three narratives give us three different perspectives on the same event, and remind us that the political events of our time are far from clear cut, in spite of what the Western media might imply. The chaos of the film's ending is indicative of the chaos of 24/7 media, where events are reported before their significance or context can begin to be analysed. The quiet plight of the Pakistani man and his son is contrasted with the fate of the filmmaker which is reported around the world, asking moral questions of both the media and those that consume it.