Synopsis

In the pastoral landscape of Kashmir, Altaaf is an orphan of war. He is slowly recovering from the psychic wounds of seeing his parents and his young sister shot to death before his eyes by a masked man. Altaaf is adopted by a policeman, Inayat Khan and his wife Neelima. One day Altaaf makes the shattering discovery that Inayat Khan is the same masked intruder who killed his defenceless family during a firefight with militants. Altaaf puts on the same mask that Khan wore and flees into the darkness...Ten years later. A famed guerilla fighter, Hilal Kohistani leads a band of renegades into Kashmir. These men pride themselves on their distance from any other militant group or government agencies and are eager to make a worldwide reputation for themselves at one stroke. They have a closely guarded plan that will change the map of the Indian subcontinent forever. This secret mission is codenamed Mission Kashmir. For Hilal Kohistani, the end justifies any means. To successfully carry out this operation, Kohistani needs a finely trained fighter whose combat skills and burning anger would drive him straight to the target like a missile. That man is ...Altaaf. Thus Altaaf returns to the streets and bylanes of his childhood. But along with Mission Kashmir, he is obsessed with his own private battle - He must kill Inayat Khan. In Srinagar, Altaaf meets his childhood sweetheart Sufiya, now a television reporter. In her Altaaf discovers love and hope. And as the countdown for Mission Kashmir ticks towards an apocalypse, Altaaf and Inayat Khan engage in a duel to the death...

Mission Kashmir is the result of a long cherished wish of Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra to make a film about his birthplace, Kashmir. Thus for Vinod, the film is...

"a labour of love, a response to the agony of Kashmir, a call for sanity and peace and an offering to the spirit of Kashmiriyat."

It is not a political film. Nowhere have I shown politicians in the film. But, yes it is a pro-Kashmir film, says Vinod. The director of such acclaimed films as An Encounter With Faces,(which was nominated for an Oscar in the Short Film category) Sazaye Maut, Khamosh and Parinda, Vinod was invited by the Kashmir Government in August 1998 to attend the re-opening of a cinema hall destroyed by militant action some ten years ago. The film screened was his last film before Mission Kashmir, Kareeb. It was during this visit to Kashmir that the idea of Mission Kashmir was born. Meanwhile writer Vikram Chandra (Red Earth and Pouring Rain) also visited Kashmir. His experiences struck a chord with Vinod who had his own experiences growing up in Srinagar. One thing led to another and speedily the seeds of a story grew which was then completed with many trips back to Kashmir for further research.

The film has been shot in actual locations in and around Srinagar and on The Dal Lake. The conditions were far from easy. Even as shooting for the film was on, conflict raged on in Kashmir. Rocket-propelled granades were fired at the Government Secretariat, a short distance from the shooting. Another day, an actor playing an escaped militant was mistaken as a real militant by the security and almost gunned down!

The interior scenes however were filmed in Bombay as was the climax. For the latter which is supposed to take place in the burnt-out houses at the edges of Dal Lake, Nitin Desai, the Production Designer, recreated the Kashmiri Environement at Film City in Mumbay. Houses were built, aged and weathered and enormous amounts of waters were brought in by tankers to provide sufficient depth to the lake.

For Vidhu Vinod Chopra, regarded as among the better filmmakes in the country, it is essential that Mission Kashmir succeeds both commercially and critically. His films following Parinda - 1942, A Love Story and Kareeb despite great technical competence have not performed strongly at the box-office and were critical failures as well, both suffering from weak screenplays. However Vinod does have a strong script writing team in Mission Kashmir which includes novelist Vikram Chandra for whom the story of the film grew out of stories he had heard on research trips to Kashmir, Jammu and Punjab in June 1998. On his experiences on working on the screenplay, Vikram in his interview to Sunday Mid-Day dated Oct 22, 2000, says...

"When you write a novel, you have complete control and authority over your material, and complete responsibility for it. Film is a deeply collaborative art and as a fiction writer you have to learn to deal with that, with giving up control of the material...You have to realise this is finally a medium about light, space, composition, sound, depth of field. You aren't making the art but are providing foundation for the heart."

Sanjay Dutt, continuing his growth as a mature actor following Vaastav, plays Inayat Khan while Hrithik Roshan plays Altaaf. Preity Zinta plays Altaaf's love interest Sufiya but the scene stealer of the film could well be Jackie Shroff in the pivotal role of the dreaded mercenary, Hilal Kohistani. Jackie had won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Parinda and the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for 1942 - A Love Story, his earlier two collaborations with Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Sonali Kulkarni, a National Award Winning actress plays her first major mainstream Hindi role as Inayat Khan's compassionate and humane wife, Neelima.

The film is shot by Vinod's regular cinematographer Binod Pradhan. The Production Design and Art Direction is by Nitin Desai while the music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is a blend of Western Instrumentation and Eastern Melody including Kashmiri folk songs. The Bhumro number is already on top of the charts everywhere.

Mission Kashmir hit the screens all over on October 27, 2000.

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