Private Project

The Mango Trail

Each morning, Rabiya moves through her routine with quiet precision, unseen by a husband who barely notices her. When their car breaks down, she follows a surreal trail of mangoes into a park where colors speak, and wind, water, and the Koel, the bird of memory and spring, call to her. There, she meets a trickster spirit drawn from Punjabi folklore, devouring mangoes with wild abandon. In this strange encounter, Rabiya brushes against a forgotten self, stirred by desire and memory. She runs. The next morning repeats like clockwork, but a basket of mangoes and the echo of a haunting melody suggest something has quietly, irreversibly shifted.

  • Danyal Rasheed
    Director
  • Danyal Rasheed
    Writer
  • Danyal Rasheed
    Producer
  • Annie Koshi
    Key Cast
    "Wife"
  • Ballo Harideen
    Key Cast
    "Husband"
  • Zehra Nawab
    Key Cast
    "Woman in the Park"
  • Haad Bakshi
    Cinematographer
  • Danyal Rasheed
    Editor
  • Shehryar Khan
    Sound Designer & Mixer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    21 minutes 13 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 28, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - York University
Director Biography - Danyal Rasheed

Danyal Rasheed is a filmmaker working between Toronto and Pakistan, known for a body of work that navigates memory, displacement, and the sacred. His key projects include A Walnut Tree (2015), Mela Chiragan: A Few Rhymes (2018), and Hatak (2020).
Hatak, a short fiction film based on a story by renowned Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, screened at international festivals including IFFSA Toronto (2021) and DCSAFF (2022). His feature documentary A Walnut Tree offers a haunting glimpse into the lives of internally displaced people in Pakistan’s conflict-ridden FATA region, premiering at IDFA (2015) and Hot Docs (2016).
In Mela Chiragan: A Few Rhymes, Rasheed turns his lens to the ecstatic rituals of the annual mela at the shrine of Sufi poet Shah Hussain. The film screened at Open Doors (Locarno Film Festival) and the Freiburger Film Forum in 2021.

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