Zero Bridge: Kashmir Is Complicated

Joyless Films

Tapa’s Neorealism in Kashmir.

Details

Runs at Northwest Film Forum, Fri., April 22–Thurs., April 28. Not rated. 99 minutes.

Related Content

• Root Table Takes Us to Bollywood, with a Twist
  February 6, 2012
• SIFF: Week 1 Picks & Pans
  May 16, 2012
• New SIFF Review: Gandu
  June 7, 2011
• Gandu
  June 8, 2011
• The Best of SIFF 2011
  June 15, 2011

More About

• Tariq Tapa
• Mohamad Imran
• Bollywood
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Made for a song with a non-pro cast and DV camera gear out of his backpack, Tariq Tapa's debut feature shows the young Kashmiri-American as a filmmaker of enormous promise and precocious maturity. You won't see terrorists, rebels, or Bollywood numbers in Zero Bridge, only close attention to telling quotidian detail as we discover the beleaguered state of Kashmir through the eyes of Dilawar (played by Tapa's cousin, Mohamad Imran), a teenage pickpocket whose virile beak of a nose belies his tender years. Dilawar is a dreamer and a would-be runaway, but like his home state—haplessly carved up between India and Pakistan—he's an orphan, stranded between the strict uncle (Ali Mohammed Dar) who exploits his labor and the rigors of an underground economy governed by parasitic mutual betrayal. He grows close to Bani (the stunning Taniya Khan), the more educated but equally trapped young woman whose passport he stole. Seen with a tripod camera, Bani is all serene resignation, while Dilawar, tracked by a jittery handheld, is a termite trying to burrow his way out of one hole after another. Tapa's poetic neorealism is less a stylistic intrusion than a keeping of faith, through the film's deliberately uneven pacing, with a life devoid of rhythms to count on.