3 min readHyderabadJun 10, 2026 08:47 PM IST
Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan revealed on Wednesday that a Netflix horror film set in Kashmir brought back memories of his visits to Srinagar in the late 1980s, where he said he witnessed the early signs of unrest that would eventually force hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits out of the Valley.
Speaking to ANI, Pawan Kalyan praised the 2025 Hindi spy thriller Dhurandhar before turning to Baramulla, a supernatural horror film released on Netflix in November 2025. “I like horror films because they engage me. They don’t let me think. They arrest my mind. Otherwise, my mind goes haywire. When I don’t get sleep, I watch a horror film and suddenly my mind calms down,” he said.
But Baramulla turned out to be more than a late-night watch. “What he conveyed in that film was entirely different. I felt what a great narrative approach,” Pawan Kalyan said. The 2025 film starred Manav Kaul, and was directed by Aditya Suhas Jambhale. The film was co-produced by Aditya Dhar, of Dhurandhar fame.
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A memory down the lane
Pawan Kalyan recalled spending a few summers in Kashmir between 1987 and 1989. Telugu film productions were shooting there and Pawan Kalyan, then a teenager known by his middle name Kalyan rather than his screen name Pawan, was handling logistics and purchase runs in the city. He described a creeping hostility during those years, incidents during shoots where people would heckle them, a tension he had not encountered anywhere else but had not fully understood at the time.
What stayed with him most was a conversation with a line producer he had worked alongside. Pawan Kalyan recalled a conversation where a local man, who had helped him previousy, told him in 1989, “I’m a Pandit. It’s becoming difficult. I don’t know what’s happening in our areas. I don’t know what we do, what’s going to happen.” “I had seen those little tremors. I felt the Kashmiri Pandit suffering. I don’t like when someone tells me ‘get out.’ I think that’s one painful thing. That’s why I liked Baramulla,” he said.
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Pawan Kalyan also praised Dhurandhar, the spy action thriller by Aditya Dhar, saying he admired its boldness, though he admitted he had not seen its second part because he could not “afford it.” The film stars Ranveer Singh, Akshaye Khanna, R Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, and Sanjay Dutt, and follows an undercover Indian intelligence agent who infiltrates the criminal underworld of Karachi.
Pawan Kalyan has served as the Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh since June 2024, holding portfolios of Panchayat Raj, Rural Development, and Environment. He is the founding president of the Jana Sena Party and represents the Pithapuram constituency in the state assembly.
Actor and politician Pawan Kalyan