What if you become a refugee in your own country? Even thinking about it would scare you. But this actually happened with around 4 lakh Kashmiri Pandits when they had to leave Kashmir and live as refugees in Jammu. Vidhu Vinod Chopra gets this story of the Kashmiri Pandits on the big screen with his film Shikara.
The movie is about Shiva (Aadil Khan) and Shanti (Sadia) who are a happily married couple in Kashmir. But soon things change for them when militants want Kashmiri Pandits to leave the valley. Looking at the difficult situation in Kashmir, they decide to leave the valley and start living as refugees in Jammu.
The film is written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rahul Pandita, and Abhijat Joshi. The screenplay of the film is good and connects with us. Chopra has narrated the film beautifully, and though the movie talks about the Kashmiri Pandits, the filmmaker has very well included the love story in it. The movie has also been shot wonderfully by Rangarajan Ramabadran. His cinematography is damn good. The only hurdle for the film would be its pace. The pace of the film is a bit slow and that is one of the negative points here.
Shikara stars newcomers Aadil Khan and Sadia in the lead roles. Both the actors have made a very confident debut and it clearly doesn’t look like it is their first film. Their chemistry in the film is also quite cute.
As we said earlier that the pace is one of the negative elements of the film, one more thing that failed to impress us is the music. The songs in the film are strictly okay.
Overall, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has come up with an untold story of Kashmiri Pandits and it surely deserves a watch.
Ratings: 3.5/5
Watch the trailer here…
