Hala: When a Coming-of-Age Story Became a Cultural Moment
There is a personal narrative involved in the film, and some may expect Hala to be a quiet, personal film, a short, simple indie narrative about a Pakistani-American teenager balancing and negotiating the challenges of two different worlds, and being a cultural teenager. Even fewer would expect a movie so simply and modestly scaled, so personal, so indie would start rippling conversations on cultural identity and intersectionality, personal fashion, the culture of the internet and social politics in the real world.In a real sense, it is no longer just a film and is something bigger than a modest personal narrative. With the cultural conversations it has triggered, the film is a cultural phenomenon.
A Story That Felt Like a Mirror
Hala is coming of age and is a narrative of emotional growth, but for the protagonist Hala, it is also a second narrative of Hala Viswanathan, Pakistani-American teenager, and for the audience a biographical emotional drama. Hala the protagonist is a teenager with school crushes, a skateboard, is a poet, but also carries the deep quiet anxiety, the heavy emotional stress, the suffocating expectations of her family in her culture. This emotional intersect, the tension of the culture being a boundary and also a fundamental resource, is something very deep culturally, not just for the South Asian audience. For so many, across cultures, her emotional deeply personal problems, her spirit, and soul and cultures are global, and universally resonant and powerful culture and global problems.
So many across cultures responded to the story about emotional distress in so many personal inter and intra cultural problems for so many глубоко . As a result of this, so many cultures are under deep emotional stress and and very deep, complicated, messy Пересечение проблем. Hala is the first film for many in the diaspora to be a personal narrative and so deeply psychological. I feel deep psychological distress and I struggle to be emotionally free, in a messy, complicated, emotionally rich, overlapping culture.Beyond the Screen: A Fashion and Aesthetic Movement
Shortly after its premiere, the film’s aesthetic began to permeate social media. Hala’s trademark modest but modern fashion—over-sized sweaters layered over shalwar inspired pants, sneakers with hijabs— became a micro trend on TikTok and Instagram. Young women began to post videos of themselves in “Hala-core” outfits, a fusion of South Asian textiles with Western silhouettes.
Even skate culture was not immune. Hala’s quiet love for skateboarding— shot in dreamy, sunlit sequences— rekindled the interest of young Muslim girls in the US and UK to pick up skateboards and share videos under the hashtag #SkateLikeHala. For once, the image of a brown Muslim girl gliding across empty suburban streets was not an anomaly; it was aspirational.
The Meme Factory
Like all imaginative cinema, Hala quickly made its way into meme culture. The character’s silences, staring, and little acts of rebellion became the subject of reaction memes, and the post that went viral showed the character’s half-smile during a class discussion, captioned: “When your mom says ‘beta, just focus on your studies’ but you’re already in love with poetry AND your skateboard instructor.”
For teenagers, the film was more than just a movie. It encapsulated the awkwardness of growing up with “too many worlds in your head.”
Politics and the Power of Representation
Where Hala especially gained importance was in social and political conversations. In the U.S., the film was a part of dialogue regarding the representation of Muslim women in the media. Until this time, popular media representations were predominantly stereotypical—casting women as either oppressed victims or exoticized. Hala changed this narrative by presenting a Muslim girl in all her humanity—flawed, witty, rebellious, and deeply introspective.
In both India and Pakistan, critics of Hala’s cultural impact noted how the film resonated with the debates of South Asian households. The tensions of the intergenerational conflict with conservative parents and liberal children, the politics of bilinguality, and the role of poetry as resistance were being discussed in living rooms thousands of miles away from the film’s Chicago setting.
The film’s nuanced treatment and depiction of Muslim characters were discussed in South Asian film festival panels. Hala was seen by many as a milestone, rather than simply a film.
Off-Screen Journeys of the Actors
Viswanathan, who carried the film with a quiet strength, became something of a generational icon in Hala as well. She is mostly known for her breakout role in Blockers. She noted that Hala was a role that was more personal for her than she had imagined. Viswanathan, who is of Indian heritage, has often felt like she does not belong in Hollywood auditions, but Hala allowed her to embrace her heritage rather than tone it down. In interviews, she talked about how fan mail she received was often lengthy and detailed how they related to the struggles of Hala. She quipped, “Sometimes it feels like I’m less of an actor and more a pen pal.”
Unexpectedly, Director Minhal Baig made the cultural discourse rounds, receiving inquiries on politics, religion, and feminism, which all extended beyond the scope of her cinematic work. In one unabashed exchange, she acknowledged that a significant part of the character Hala was based on her journals from her teenage years. “The poetry in the film? Some of that was mine at 16. I just never thought anyone else would read it,” she explained.
Backstage Stories That Shaped the Film
Even though Hala feels seamless on screen, its making was anything but smooth. With respect to the skateboarding scenes, one of the more widely shared backside anecdotes of the film is that Geraldine Viswanathan was a terrible skater, and the crew joked about the plethora of times she fell during her rehearsal. Baig, however, did not keep it hidden. In fact, she told Gerladine to embrace the mistakes and flaws, the unsteady pushes, the uncertain turns because it showcased Hala’s vulnerability. What the audience viewed was not a polished performance but a true example of trial and error.
Another fact that did not get much attention was the classroom extras. Many of them were not professional actors but local teens from Chicago. To enhance authenticity, she allowed them to improvise. This is why the school sequences are so realistic; the extras were not acting. They were just being themselves.
Lasting Buzz and Everyday Conversations
Even months after its release on streaming services, familiarity with Hala continued to expand and encompass more and more areas of daily life. Educators included it on syllabi being prepared for courses on identity and multiculturalism. Family dynamics discussions in book clubs included a mention of Hala. In a 2020 twist on its growing popularity, Hala was listed on curative lists of films to watch during lockdown—an intimate and poignant film, it was a comforting watch during the emotional lockdown.
A viewer from Mumbai recounting on social media the experience of watching Hala with her mother articulated how it opened a previously closed doorway on communication and understanding. “We fought about everything—my clothes, my friends, my choices. But after Hala, my mom just hugged me and said, ‘I see you.’ We didn’t solve everything, but we started talking.” Messages like these, more than the accolades and reviews, show a film’s true cultural impact and power.
More than a Movie
Hala created cultural impact because of the story it told and the impact it has had since its release. It inspired fashion trends, memes, and debates in many living rooms. It presented a reflection to many South Asian women, and particularly young women, a reflection they had been denied. For universal audiences, it was an invitation to revisit the narrative of their own adolescent years.
It is uncommon for a subdued independent drama to transform into a cultural landmark, but Hala achieved it—not by being noisy, but by being honest. And there are instances when that is the type of narrative that continues to resonate.
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