“Valley of Saints”, the debut feature film from director Musa Syeed, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival tomorrow – and screens each day until Friday. The film chronicles the attempts of a young Kashmiri male to flee the militarised zone around Dal Lake, in Srinagar. Earlier this week, we interviewed Musa Syeed and producer Nicholas Bruckman:

DFI: What prompted you to write “Valley of Saints”?
Musa Syeed: For my first feature, I really wanted to do something personal, so I turned to my own family history. In the 1960s, my father was jailed as a political prisoner for participating in the Kashmiri independence movement. After being released and immigrating to America (where I was eventually born) he was mostly silent about his life in Kashmir. We weren’t raised speaking the language, and we didn’t visit our family there. Kashmir became an almost mythical place for me.

But like many children of immigrants, I was curious to know what day-to-day life was like in Kashmir. I didn’t hear many personal stories.¬¬ Exploring Kashmir’s landscape made me realise that the environment allowed for a more universal story.

DFI: How did you go about casting the film – did you hold auditions and find talent in Kashmir?
Musa Syeed: I knew I was going to set the film in the unique water-world of Dal Lake, where thousands of people inhabit manmade islands, rely only on boats for transportation, and make a living from the lake. So, I decided to cast a non-professional from that community of boat people in the lead role.

A year before production, I spent a summer getting to know the community. One of the boatmen who caught my eye was named Gulzar. He eventually showed me poems he wrote. I could see that I was dealing with an artistic soul. So, I spent a week living and working with him, and we became good friends. I asked him to be in the film. He agreed.
The only professional in the film was Neelofar Hamid, who plays the lead female role.

DFI: How much time did you spend on the individual processes of making “Valley of Saints” – script writing, shooting and editing?
Musa Syeed: Off and on, I was writing the first draft of the script for 5-6 months, leading to my winning a grant for it in 2009. I spent that summer in Kashmir doing additional research, when I found Gulzar and cast him as the lead. Over the next 6-7 months, I went back to America, revised the script to fit Gulzar and went through pre-production. But shortly before returning to Kashmir for production, a military curfew was imposed because of heightened unrest. The script I wrote wouldn’t be possible to shoot under a curfew. So in a couple weeks, I reworked the film and over the course of two and half months, our very small, production team was able to complete shooting the film. Just this last week we finally finished the film.

DFI: What other challenges did you face during production of the movie?
Nicholas Bruckman: We went to Kashmir knowing that there was a curfew in place, so we decided to keep our production within the confines of Dal Lake. In any case, we were pretty much trapped there, since transportation wasn’t allowed on the roads. But we realised we would have to venture out into the city. Whad to break the curfew and sneak into the city at night to shoot a few scenes.

One evening an undercover police officer followed us to where we were staying, demanding our passports, and told us we were to leave Kashmir immediately. But our Kashmiri crew invited the officer to our place for chai (tea). The officer came over, had a cup of tea, we slipped him a few rupees, and he decided to leave us alone.

DFI: Why is it important to shine a spotlight on events in Kashmir now?
Nicholas Bruckman: The Kashmir conflict has gone in and out of the spotlight for more than twenty years, and yet remains largely misunderstood by the outside world. It’s known that Kashmir is the war-torn flashpoint between India and Pakistan, but the complexities and divisiveness of the issue are so overwhelming that it’s impossible to truly have a full understanding.

DFI: Please describe the size and scale of the film-making community in Kashmir?
Musa Syeed: The film community isn’t that large in Kashmir. Because of the instability, it’s often hard to get productions under way. Most of the creative media work goes towards soap operas and a few documentaries. It’s hard to compete with Bollywood. A production company called Associated Media in Srinagar was helpful, as was Mushtaaque Khan, a local producer, who set up a number of auditions.

DFI: How did you go about securing funding for “Valley of Saints”?
Nicholas Bruckman: Most investors we brought the film to were afraid to put money into a production in a conflict zone. We ended up going back to our roots, and were able to successfully fund the film entirely with foundation grants. This severely restricted our budget but had an important advantage: we had no one to answer to and total creative freedom.

DFI: How did you go about securing the technical help?
Nicholas Bruckman: We knew we had to make this film under the radar, and to do so required bringing the smallest crew possible. Typically, we were a crew of four, three from the US (myself, Musa and Yoni Brook, the cinematographer) and our local production manager (Altaf Mehraj), who, like the actors, had no prior film experience. He was actually a young lawyer who was out of work with the courts closed due to the curfew and ongoing violence.

DFI: Are you hopeful audiences in India and Pakistan will be able to see “Valley of Saints” in cinemas?
Musa Syeed: Yes, for those audiences, there’s been a lot of spin surrounding coverage of Kashmir, and we hope to present something different.
It’s important to me that the film reaches Kashmiri audiences. Kashmiris have been resilient in the face of the conflict, and I hope the film reflects that. I’d love to do a screening on the lake.

DFI: Which other film makers from Kashmir should audiences seek out?
Musa Syeed: “Zerobridge”, a film which premiered at Venice a couple years ago, was really the first film to capture modern-day life in Srinagar. The film was directed by Tariq Tapa, who like me, is a Kashmiri American. In a way, I felt like he opened a door to tell authentic, personal stories in Kashmir with the politics in the background.

There are a few up and coming filmmakers in Kashmir as well. Arshad Mushtaq in particular directed a feature period-piece, Akh Daleel Loolech (A Story of Love), which was well received locally.