Northern Lights

Bashir,who was last seen in Neeraj Pandey’s critically acclaimed A Wednesday,has shot the entire film in Kashmir. It is the story of psychological decay in a family that is trying to come to terms with the death of the elder son who was a tourist photographer. The younger son Rafiq attempts to cross the border to become a millitant but fails. He returns home,and one day finds his older brother’s camera which still holds the last photographs he had shot.

Playing the head of the family is acclaimed Iranian actor Reza Nazi,best known for his roles in Majid Majidi’s

Children of Heaven and The Song of Sparrows. “He had no airs. He did not bother that we had no folding chairs to sit on,no vanity vans and no spot-boys to assist him. He shot his scenes in 10 days without any glitches,” says Bashir,who first met Nazi in 2007 while helping out with subtitling The Song of Sparrows into German . “Nazi went on to win a Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival for the film. When I wanted him to act in Harud,I called and told him that he owed me one,” laughs Bashir,who will also be screening the film at the Rotterdam Film Festival to be held in the Netherlands later this year.

The other “stars” of the film are a group of first-time actors who were chosen from various acting workshops held in Mumbai. “They are more like models in the film,who emote the basic action that we wanted. This adds a degree of simplicity to the shots,” says Bashir. Bashir has made the film on a budget of less than Rs 2 crore with Chasing Tales,a new production house,helping him along. “It helped that we managed to get Hubert Bals Fund for post-production work from the organisers of the Rotterdam Film Festival. We were working on an embarrassingly low budget. I am glad the film is finally ready,” says Bashir. The film will travel the festival circuit in the hope that “a distributor might be interested to release it to the mainstream next year”. The Toronto Film festival is a good start.

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