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About the film

My family left Kashmir in 1990 as a part of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus due to the armed insurgency. I was 6 years old and therefore grew up remembering nothing of my home. 24 years later, I went to Kashmir for the first time with my family. That event acts as a catalyst for me to rediscover and retrace my roots with the help of my sister and extended family. We hear oral accounts of a less documented event and time in the history of Kashmir. At a personal level, it reveals the cruelty of exile and how it continues across generations.

Filmmaker's Statement

I'm a Kashmiri and Kashmir has had a history of conflict since India's independence. I'm also a Pandit, a minority Kashmiri Hindu community whose unfortunate forced exodus from Kashmir in 1990 is something that has only come to light now, in larger, popular discussions. Their pain and loss have often gone undocumented but has been co-opted to serve various agendas. Now with a certain generation maturing, people are hearing our narratives which are not unidimensional, and I thought my personal story will add to this history which needs to be told. This film explores the conflict as someone who experienced it as a child and who has constantly struggled with the idea of belonging and identity. Because Kashmir has sadly created both, children of conflict and children of exile, the film is also an attempt to show how trauma endures and shapes the world we create. My pandit identity has been a source of both pain and pride to me. And by voicing my own familial history, I hope to create resonance with other families that are survivors of conflict. As an artist, I am also interested in how memories and forgetting shapes our perception of things and how images created at home can become powerful intimate testimonies of loss, love, belonging and pain.

About the director

Born in Srinagar, Kashmir, but brought up in Delhi, Madhulika Jalali did her Master's in Film Making from London. Her passion for films led her to move to Mumbai. She has varied experience in the films and advertising industry with a forte in production dynamics. She has been a Line Producer for Bollywood feature films like Sherni, A Death in the Gunj etc. and has also been associated with various directors in the advertising industry as an Executive Producer. Apart from this, she continues to work independently on projects for different formats. This is her debut film as a director.