Arfat Sheikh, a 39-year-old filmmaker, has set out to challenge Bollywood’s portrayal of Kashmir with his debut feature film, Saffron Kingdom. Drawing from his own experiences in the conflict-ridden region, Sheikh seeks to give voice to a narrative he says has been erased and misrepresented by mainstream Indian cinema.
Sheikh’s journey is deeply personal. His father, Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, a renowned Kashmiri musician, was allegedly “disappeared” by police in Punjab in 2003. Growing up in Indian-administered Kashmir, Sheikh witnessed the relentless cycle of violence and repression, leaving scars that never healed.
“I grew up with a sense of loss, of searching for answers that never came,” Sheikh tells The Independent. “What’s happening since 2019 with a lot of these Bollywood films is that the entire premise starts with ‘terrorism of Kashmir.’ Our voices are being suppressed and trampled upon.”
Sheikh criticises Bollywood films like The Kashmir Files and Pathaan for perpetuating harmful stereotypes by focusing solely on violence and ignoring the lived experiences of Kashmiris. He argues that the region’s portrayal in popular culture has been reductive, romanticising its scenic beauty or villainising its people.
The revocation of Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy in 2019 by the Indian government, accompanied by a curfew, communications blackout, and a crackdown on dissent, was a turning point for Sheikh. It intensified what he describes as an urgency to reclaim his heritage and tell the silenced stories of his people.
Saffron Kingdom is Sheikh’s answer to that erasure. The film, shot primarily in Atlanta, USA, explores the intergenerational trauma stemming from the violent upheavals of the 1990s in Kashmir. It follows a Kashmiri-American family grappling with the lingering impact of conflict and the loss of their identity.
“Art is personal,” Sheikh says. “You cannot create without having a personal connection to what you are making.” However, making the film in Kashmir was not an option. “I would not have even gotten permission to shoot. Art is persecuted in Kashmir,” he explains.
Instead, Sheikh turned to the United States to find a global audience for his story.
Sheikh’s journey as a storyteller began in the non-profit sector, where he travelled to remote areas of Kashmir documenting the stories of others. However, he found the limitations of documentary filmmaking frustrating.
“The documentaries would just go on YouTube and reach funders, but they didn’t have the impact I wanted,” he says.
This led him to fiction filmmaking, where he felt he could recreate and amplify the stories of his people. Saffron Kingdom blends a diasporic narrative with reflections on Kashmir’s history, including the abrogation of Article 370, which serves as a key plot point.
The protagonist, a Kashmiri-American, embarks on a journey to uncover his family’s past and understand why they left Kashmir, mirroring Sheikh’s own quest for answers.
Sheikh hopes his film will counter the dominant narratives in Bollywood and draw attention to the struggles of Kashmiris. “We’ve been kept under their boots for too long,” he says.
For Sheikh, Saffron Kingdom is not just a film—it’s an act of resistance and reclamation. “This is our story,” he says. “And it’s time the world heard it.”
