“ Widow of Silence is not a take on who is wrong and who is right and what is to be done in Kashmir,” says Praveen Morchhale, whose Urdu feature film was screened to a packed hall at the ongoing Bengaluru International Film Festival (Biffes).
The film focuses on ‘half-widows’, a term given to Kashmiri women whose husbands have disappeared. “It is about their indomitable spirit,” says the film-maker.
Widow of Silence was premièred at the Busan International Film Festival to an overwhelming response. Morchhale’s film is a powerful critique of the apathy of the State towards women whose husbands disappeared during the violent phase in the ’90s.
According to him, the film was shot on a shoestring budget over 17 days in the Dras region of Kashmir. Interestingly, except two actors, all the others are non-professionals. Rather than conduct workshops, he allowed them to perform freely.
Morchhale told The Hindu , “As a film-maker and an Indian citizen, I think violence will not take us anywhere. Violence is not the solution to the problem, and just triggers counter violence. It is cyclic . Dialogue is the only solution to the Kashmir problem, and it needs political will.”
Morchhale decided to produce the film himself when the producer he approached sought six months’ time. “It was an urgent issue I felt like addressing after I started researching the subject. I was not in a position to wait. Months of research took me to a lot of court cases and volumes of information about half-widows,” he said.
“The real challenge was to keep the issue subtle and at the same time real,” said Morchhale, whose next film is about the philosophy of life and death from the point of view of a grave-digger in Kashmir. His earlier films were Barefoot to Goa (2013) and Walking With the Wind (2017).
