Filmmaker Abu Aleeha, credited in earlier promotion as the director of Mango Jutt, has said he walked away from the project over disagreements about its final edit, days after the film’s trailer dropped without his name in its visible credits.

The trailer, featuring Faysal Quraishi, Hareem Farooq and Shamoon Abbasi, was released on Wednesday. In an Instagram story on Friday, Aleeha called it “cringe-worthy” and said the film itself was worse.

Aleeha said the project was his brainchild and that he began work on it about three and a half years ago. He said he wrote the script, cast the roles and brought Farooq on board as both actor and co-producer. According to him, filming wrapped around two and a half years ago, and he locked the edit about four months later.

Further adding, he said, Farooq’s team then suggested sending the film to India for further editing. He claimed the version that came back a year later was “very bad” and cut more than half of Ayesha Jehanzeb’s scenes, while Maira Bangash’s role was similarly trimmed. He further described the cut as a “C-grade edit lock” and said he refused to approve it.

He also said the Punjab government granted the team Rs30 million during this period, after which he was asked to shoot additional scenes to justify the funding. Aleeha said he refused, calling the proposed opening scene unfeasible.

Aleeha said the disagreements led him to withdraw while the film continued without him, and that he would not have raised the grievances had Farooq not spoken first. He maintained that the story, dialogues, characters and footage came from his work, while acknowledging the wider team, and said he still believes the film has potential.

The film marks Farooq’s first Punjabi-language project and her first big-screen appearance since 2019’s Heer Maan Ja. No release date has been announced.