JOIN USKaafiron ki Namaaz, a small budget film, has grabbed the awards for Best Feature Film, Best Debut Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor at the 2014 edition of Ladakh International Film Festival.
The narrative follows a writer and his camera assistant who travel from Kolkata to Srinagar. The writer’s purpose is to interview a court-martialled army man. Conversations seem absurd, existential and purposeless at times as the two of them sit in the same room discussing each other’s lives on a rainy Christmas Eve, in an old, abandoned Kashmiri hotel. As the night gets colder and the questions gather momentum, the encounter develops into a chilling thriller.
The director, Ram Ramesh Sharma, who is a drop out, decided to leave the standard filmmaking course in the middle. “Had I waited till the completion of the course, the urgency to say those things could have fizzled out. You need to motivate your inspirations continuously, otherwise they will leave you in solitude. Dropping out of film school was like a motivation to convince myself how serious I was about telling this story,” Sharma tells Metrolife. Bhargav Saikia, the producer of the film and Sharma’s confidant also left the school after a few months.
“Experience is definitely a better teacher when it comes to non-technical jobs in filmmaking such as producing and directing. It is about following your instincts,” Saikia says.
Sharma explains how the film just happened while he was travelling from Mumbai to Delhi three years ago. He met three men, who were travelling in the same cabin – a retired income-tax officer, a journalist from a national daily and his associate. The three men started having a heated argument over a national issue and Sharma had fun being the observer. He penned down Kaafiron ki Namaaz on this experience.
According to Sharma, each character — the army man, the writer, and the bandwalla — are talking about their darkest, personal and uncomfortable matters.
The rights of the film now lie with Bohra Brothers, who’ve also distributed films like Gangs of Wasseypur and Shahid.
Agreeing to be bound by the budget, location and other logistics, Sharma says, “But that’s where the fun lies, right? It’s an inventive and inspiring space.”
Sharma adds, “Kashmir has always been my beautiful utopian dream. It’s really unfortunate what war, militancy and floods have done to the state. Kashmiris are very sweet and humble people. I hope and pray for a clean weather in the Valley. Also, Kaafiron Ki Namaaz is not about Kashmir conflict. It is about a place full of ironies, where every morning is a hope and every night seems like a confession. Kashmir was the only place which got stuck in my head. A gateway to heaven built on graveyards.
As a backdrop, it became my latent character.”