Tamaash: Our First Film for the World

Last November, I had written a post about the post-shoot blues I was suffering from after shooting a short film. Since then, there has been no mention of that film on this blog. Well, here it goes. We started editing in December, and our other commitments did not allow us to come up with a rough cut until March. We then started showing it to others for feedback, and realised this film is being received well. What had started as an exercise to learn film-making had turned into a pleasant surprise. But the bigger news was yet to come, and hence the film was not mentioned on this blog. Not yet.

Our 32-minute film in Kashmiri language, "Tamaash", has just been selected to screen at two international film festivals. It premieres at Seattle South Asian Film Festival on the first week of October. You can click here to have a look at its mention in the festival programme. And between 17th to 26th October, it will be screened up to four times at Heartland Film Festival, Indianapolis. It is a competition category and if the film wins there (it is impossibly tough, but if it does), it would be eligible (only eligible, not nominated) for the Oscar Award for Best Live-Action Short!

Perhaps this is the biggest news of our career, of my brother and mine. We wrote, produced, edited, and directed "Tamaash" that went on to become our first film for the world. (Our previously made not-so-good short films must be feeling so ignored!) However, this could be possible only with the enormous support of close to a hundred people in Mumbai, Kashmir and elsewhere, and several hundreds of best wishers, including you - the reader of this blog. The film was funded by close friends who did not even go through the story and became proud co-producers of it based on their faith in us. I hope we didn't let them down. And thanks to them, and to so many others, five years after moving to this city it's time for one of my very own works to play on big screen in a couple of cities far, far away. Until our debut feature film arrives, and it may take a while, let us offer you some short fiction. The first in the list is ready to be served! :)

P.S. I hope to write a series of posts on the wonderful journey of making the film. That Kashmir trip has all the makings of one of the most significant trips of my life. It would be fun sharing it with you.