Aamir Bashir | India | 2010 | 99’ | Urdu spoken, English subtitles
Aamir Bashir’s debut feature Harud (Autumn) is set in Kashmir, a hotbed of India-Pakistan territorial disputes and skirmishes for decades. The meek Rafiq (Shahnawaz Bhat) returns to his home in Kashmir after unsuccessfully trying to cross the border to Pakistan to become a militant. His village seems permanently under siege, full of army personnel, and there’s the humiliation of daily security frisking. Rafiq’s brother is one of the thousands of young men who have gone missing since the military insurgency. His mother is still hopeful of finding him, but his father is mostly shellshocked (Iranian actor Reza Naji, Best Actor, Berlin, for Majid Majidi’s Song of the Sparrows, a casting coup). Rafiq’s life gets a flicker of meaning after he finds his brother’s camera. But the film moves inexorably to its tragic climax at Eid, when a lamb is sacrificed. Director Aamir Bashir is a Kashmir-born actor turned director. Harud is a very quiet, understated film, whose silences and sparse sound track evoke the suffocation and listlessness of living under siege. Although it is Shahnawaz Bhat’s debut performance, his eloquent face and soulful eyes burn in your memory long after.
