Baramulla Movie Review: When depicting different milieus and their tragedies, does an insider’s perspective and lived-in experience help achieve authenticity? Or can a filmmaker tell those stories regardless of their backgrounds? It’s a complex debate. But what knowledge acquired from personal history and identity can help with is portraying objectivity. And Aditya Dhar’s Baramulla bears a testament to the same. His voice as a Kashmiri Pandit finds an echo in this tale that’s gut-wrenching, spine-chilling and mythical in equal measures.
In 2016, the director-producer penned a short story on the Kashmiri Pandit community that had to leave their home behind during the catastrophic exodus of the 1990s. And now, it has found its way to the screen. The human story, laced with Aditya Suhas Jambhale’s vision, gave birth to Baramulla which has supernatural motifs peppered all over it. Set in 2016, it centres around DSP Ridwaan Shafi Sayyed and his family, who’ve recently moved to Baramulla from Reasi.
A hostage situation and an accidental gunshot death in a public school back in Reasi has Ridwaan and his daughter Noorie battling PTSD. Now, in Baramulla, Ridwaan starts inspecting the disappearance of Shoaib, a child, during a magic show. Soon, a series of such events unfold, endangering Ridwaan’s family and the otherwise peaceful town. But there’s more to these kidnappings than what meets the eye. While hunting down the terrorist outfit responsible, Ridwaan encounters some supernatural events.
His wife, Gulnaar, and children, Noorie and Ayaan, notice an eerie presence in their new home. But this supernaturalism is more than just paranormal. It leads the Sayyeds to come to terms with their own demons. But in a more tangible shape, they begin to see the spirits of a family of Kashmiri Pandits, who had suffered inhuman atrocities in the same house years ago. And it is through this intermingling of the worldly and the otherworldly that Dhar and Jambhale make a commentary on and attempt to portray the suffering and struggles that Kashmiri Pandits went through.
