SRINAGAR: At a moment when Bollywood actor Imran Khan is quietly filming his comeback Netflix feature Adhure Hum Adhure Tum in the autumn-soft lanes of Srinagar, Kashmir has unexpectedly become one of the most talked-about subjects at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. The valley, its people, its landscapes, its unfinished cinematic dreams, has travelled from Dal Lake to India’s biggest film stage, shaping conversations across red carpets, masterclasses, and restored classics.
Imran Khan has been shooting in the city for the past five days, working through schedules at Nishat, Dal Lake, and the Nowgam railway station. The production team, coordinated by M Y Productions, said the actor has already wrapped up the schedule. Khan, spotted filming near Ghat No 19 on Thursday, described Kashmir as his “second home”, recalling childhood memories intertwined with the valley. His grandfather, filmmaker Nasir Hussain, shot classics like Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon and Teesri Manzil in Kashmir, and Khan said the nostalgia of those stories was “like returning to family”.
The Netflix film, co-starring Bhumi Pednekar and directed by Danish Aslam, is described as a warm but chaotic romantic dramedy, an echo of the roles that once made Khan a youth icon. The project began filming in May and is set to premiere in early 2026.
While Khan filmed on the banks of Dal Lake, a different kind of reflection played out in Panaji. At IFFI 2025, Kashmir resurfaced not merely as a location but as an emotional and cinematic legacy. The most intimate moment of the festival came when filmmaker Muzaffar Ali and his son, director Shaad Ali, revisited Zooni, Ali’s unfinished Kashmir epic whose fragments have lived for decades in reels, memories, and music.
On stage, the two discussed Kashmir not as a backdrop but as a consciousness. Ali said films about the region “must be born in Kashmir,” urging future storytellers to create from within its cultural soil rather than observe it from a distance. Shaad revealed that he has quietly begun restoring the negatives and soundtracks of Zooni, piecing together what time scattered. The short documentary Zooni: Lost and Found, screened during the session, showed a son retracing his father’s halted dream.
Kashmir was present in other voices too. Actor Manoj Bajpayee, on the IFFI red carpet, said that Indian filmmakers were finally telling stories that go beyond conflict and security. “Things are changing very rapidly,” he noted, adding that films like Laila Majnu marked a shift towards narratives rooted in the Kashmiri people, not just its politics. Bajpayee, who is in Goa for the premiere of the third season of The Family Man, said new filmmakers were courageously experimenting with Kashmir’s lived realities across cinema and OTT platforms.
Then came a powerful pitch from Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who walked the red carpet straight after a private holiday in the valley. The Srinagar-born filmmaker urged crews to take their cameras to Kashmir, calling it an unmatched cinematic landscape. His restored classic 1942: A Love Story is screening at IFFI in newly remastered 8K format, and he said that films like Mission Kashmir, now 25 years old, carry themes that still resonate. “Time has proven me right,” he said.
This year’s festival, showcasing 270 films from 81 countries, has embraced the theme Convergence of Creativity and Technology, introducing an AI Hackathon and the largest-ever WAVES Film Bazaar. Yet despite the scale, the quiet heartbeat of the week seemed to pulse around Kashmir: its memory, its artistry, its unfinished films, its new stories.
As Imran Khan wraps up his Srinagar schedule, and as panels in Goa invoke the valley with affection and urgency, it is clear that Kashmir is no longer just a scenic postcard for Indian cinema. It is a narrative moving in two directions at once, from a lakeside film set to India’s biggest film festival, and from decades-old reels to a new generation determined to tell the valley’s stories on its own terms.
