Islamabad, Pakistan: Screen Locked, a 30-minute short film, was recently presented at a focus-group screening at The Black Hole, Islamabad. The film is written, directed, and co-produced by the Hollywood graduate and an award-winning filmmaker, Khalid Hasan Khan, with Alyy Khan, a BIFA-nominated international star, who plays an unconventional psychologist, also serving as co-producer.

Screen Locked is a compelling psychological drama that examines one of the defining crises of our time: digital addiction and its subtle yet profound erosion of human agency, human connection, and meaning. Set entirely within the confined space of a psychiatrist’s clinic, the film unfolds as an intense therapeutic encounter between a teenage boy and his doctor. What begins as a clinical interaction gradually deepens into an exploration of human instinct, the unconscious, and the compulsive pull of screens.

During the post-screening discussion, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy reflected on the film’s philosophical depth, observing: “Human beings are still animals. We still have those instincts which have never ended. One of the main reasons for digital addiction is that we are basically sheep, we like to walk in a herd. Social media tells us where we stand in that community.”

He further noted the film’s engagement with depth psychology: “If there is no shadow, we get worried. What is hidden in our unconscious is reflected in this film.”Clinical psychologist Dr Maleeha Abbass highlighted the film’s societal relevance, particularly for younger audiences: “Digital addiction is not just an individual problem, it is collective. We are connected to more people in terms of quantity, yet we feel increasingly isolated. Our organic ways of connecting are disappearing.”She added:“ The helplessness, the feeling that one cannot stop, is exactly what we see in behavioral addictions, and the film captures this psychological reality very accurately.” Speaking at The Black Hole, Alyy Khan shared insights into both the making and intent of the film: “This film was made with very limited resources, but with complete conviction. We shot a nineteen-page script in a single day, transforming a personal space into a clinic, because the urgency of the subject mattered more than scale.” Reflecting on the film’s deeper purpose, he added: “The genie is out of the bottle.

Technology is not going away. But what we hope is that when audiences leave the screening, they ask themselves one essential question: who is in charge, me or the screen?” Award-winning filmmaker Khalid Hasan Khan, who joined the session via audio link, emphasized that Screen Locked is based on an original screenplay, clarifying that both the central character and the specialized field of digital addiction psychology, as depicted in the film, are fictional constructs. He further remarked that “Alyy Khan’s dual performance,as both the psychologist and the film’s symbolic ‘digital enemy’, represents one of the strongest performances of Alyy Khan's career”.