Spare The Rod

Spare the Rod follows nine-year-old Qasim and his family in rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the year after Qasim is beaten by his headmaster for missing a day of school. As his parents pursue justice through the courts, they face mounting costs, stalled hearings, and a village that quietly cuts them off for speaking up, while the headmaster refuses to admit wrongdoing and defends corporal punishment as necessary. It is a film about what it costs to demand accountability in a place where the man who beats your child is called his spiritual father.