The year Pakistan stopped waiting for recognition | The Express Tribune

Across 2025, a clutch of Pakistani artists carried their work far beyond national borders, returning home with trophies that underlined a maturing creative sector. From the Grammys to a leading environmental festival and a Moscow film award, recognition arrived unmistakably.

Sound engineer Taurees Habib set the pace in February, lifting a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media through his engineering work on Hans Zimmer’s score for the Hollywood epic ‘Dune: Part Two’, a historic breakthrough for Pakistan.

He later shared the moment online, unboxing the unmistakable gilded gramophone and acknowledging how rare such recognition remains for South Asian engineers. It marked only the second Grammy for a Pakistani artist, following singer Arooj Aftab’s 2022 success.

In October, documentary maker Jawad Sharif delivered another first when his film ‘Moklani – The Last Mohanas’ won a Jackson Wild Media Award in the United States, honours frequently described as the ‘Nature Oscars’ for environmental storytelling.

Sharif dedicated the award to the Mohana fishing community whose fragile way of life the film records, stressing that international applause matters only if it protects people and ecosystems otherwise pushed to the margins of national and global conversations.

In November, Ustaad Naseeruddin Saami also brought home the prestigious 2025 Aga Khan Music Awards. Saami was named a Patron’s Award recipient at the Aga Khan Music Awards in London, an honour celebrating his six-decade dedication to preserving and transmitting the rare Sufi-khayal vocal tradition.

Later in the year, actor Sonya Hussyn carried Pakistani cinema into Moscow’s Eurasian Open Award ‘Diamond Butterfly’, taking Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the feature ‘Deemak’ at a festival that welcomed films from 17 countries across several continents.

She used the stage to encourage young Pakistani women who doubt their prospects, insisting their voices carry weight abroad when craft meets persistence, while also thanking Russian hosts and local diplomats whose support brought the production onto the international circuit.

Taken together, the year’s honours show how Pakistani creativity is diversifying its footprint, extending beyond on-screen glamour to sound engineering and verite documentary work that travels across cultures without surrendering detail or stories of communities rarely placed at the centre.

Elsewhere, artists such as Meesha Shafi and Arooj Aftab placed new work before Grammy voters for the 2026 cycle, underscoring how Pakistan is no longer an occasional guest in music conversations, even when submissions do not yet translate into wins.