SRINAGAR: The international bestseller ‘The Collaborator’ by London-based Kashmiri writer Mirza Waheed is set to captivate audiences in a cinematic adaptation.
Kashmir novelist Mirza Waheed’s novel, The Collaborator is being adapted as a film. It is a story set in the 1990s and revolves around the life and times of Kashmir at the peak of militancy. The production of the film has concluded, a website reported.
The novel was The Telegraph’s one of the 2011 books of the year and the Guardian’s first book award finalist.
According to Variety, the film is produced jointly by Mulberry Films (US) and Metro Productions (Georgia) and produced by A New Christmas producer Travis Hodgkins, who has also adapted Waheed’s novel for the screen. “It is executive produced by MxW Ventures and CnR Films,” the news report said. Below-the-line talent includes Swedish cinematographer Johan Holmqvist (Springfloden), editor Jamie Kirkpatrick (Old Henry) and composer Wayne Sharpe (Basmati Blues).”
“The first novel I wrote many years ago is being adapted into a film,” Mirza Waheed wrote on X.
The yet-to-be-named film’s cast includes Dharmalingam (Curtis Brown and Link Entertainment), Rai (The Foundry), Nitin Ganatra (Conway Van Gelder Grant), Kapadia (S+C Management), and Meera Ganatra (Core Mgmt). “The Collaborator” promises to deliver a powerful cinematic experience, delving into the complexities of war, identity, and loss.
The protagonist of the novel is a boy who is coerced by the situation to crossover the Line of Control, the de facto border between the two parts of Kashmir. The story later gets into a complex situation of happening in the territories straddling the LoC. It is “a gripping exploration of this turbulent period”.
The film was directed by Dennis Lee.
The adaptation of The Collaborator is said to be the first major film that will tackle the turbulent 1990s different from the native and popular filmmaking. Open-source information suggests that Mulberry Films had acquired the rights of the novel for the film as early as 2013. It was not immediately known why it took a decade to complete the film.
