Saqib Rather
Srinagar, Sep 10: As the inaugural International Film Festival of Jammu & Kashmir (IFFJK) drew to a close on Thursday, September 10, one of the films that brought an intimate, deeply personal dimension to the festival’s regional competition was ‘Arifa’, starring actress Tanya Maniktala.
Directed by Rohin Raveendran Nair and written by Durgesh Singh, Arifa was selected among five films in the competitive J&K Select section of IFFJK 2026. The film is part of the three-film anthology ‘Kashmir Muhabbat Se’, produced by Gubbara Entertainment.
For Maniktala, whose breakthrough came with her portrayal of Lata Mehra in A Suitable Boy, the film offers a markedly different acting canvas. Rather than a sweeping romance or a conventional drama, Arifa is built around restrained emotions, family wounds and the difficult journey towards reconciliation.
At the centre of Arifa is an estranged daughter who returns to Kashmir to see her dying father. Her arrival at the family home reopens memories that have remained buried for years, forcing both father and daughter to confront a painful past.
The film’s official production description puts its emotional premise starkly: “A dying patriarch seeks forgiveness from the daughter he once banished for love.” As Arifa returns, the old wounds between them begin to surface, while her attempt to reclaim her father’s legacy also becomes a journey towards reclaiming her own place in the family.
The film consequently uses Kashmir not simply as a scenic backdrop but as an emotional landscape — a place filled with memories, belonging and unresolved relationships.
As one description of the film puts it: “Sometimes the most difficult journey is not the journey back to a place, but the journey back to a relationship.”
That idea captures much of what makes Arifa distinctive. Its Kashmir is not merely the postcard Valley of mountains, lakes and gardens, nor is it defined solely by the conflict narrative that has dominated much of the region’s representation on screen.
Instead, the film looks inward — into a family home, a fractured relationship and the silences that can exist between people who once knew each other most intimately.
The makers of Kashmir Muhabbat Se have sought to present the region through stories that move beyond familiar headlines and stereotypes. Arifa does this through a small, emotionally focused family drama in which love, regret, loss and forgiveness take centre stage.
The choice is significant in the context of IFFJK, whose inaugural edition sought to reconnect Jammu and Kashmir with cinema while providing a platform for stories rooted in the region.
Five films made by filmmakers from Jammu and Kashmir were selected for the J&K Select competition: Searching for the Grandpa by Mohammad Wali, Arifa by Rohin Raveendran Nair, Batt Koch (The Lost Lane) by Siddarth Koul and Ankit Wali, Tasrufdaar (Djinns of Kashmir) by Kapil Mattoo, and Naqsh-e-Daur (The Story of Ghulam Nabi Dhar) by Baba Tassaduq Hussain.
Together, the films explore childhood, family, displacement, identity, heritage and the changing social landscape of Kashmir.
Maniktala’s presence gives Arifa a recognisable national face while keeping the story anchored in its local setting. Her earlier breakthrough as Lata in Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy established her as an actor capable of carrying emotionally complex characters. She later appeared in projects including Mumbaikar, Tooth Pari and Kill.
In Arifa, however, the challenge lies less in spectacle and more in understatement. The character’s return home is simultaneously physical and emotional: she is forced to revisit memories, confront her father’s choices and decide what to do with a relationship marked by years of hurt.
The production’s cast also includes veteran actor Harish Khanna, with Maniktala and Khanna forming the film’s emotional core.
The attention around Arifa came against the backdrop of an ambitious maiden IFFJK. Organised by the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, the four-day festival ran from September 7 to 10 under the theme “Rang-e-Cinema”, bringing together films from India and abroad and creating dedicated platforms for regional storytelling.
The festival showcased 135 films from 41 countries, with programmes spanning international competition, documentaries, shorts, Bharat Panorama and J&K Select.
The prize structure also underlined the festival’s emphasis on professional recognition. The total announced prize purse was ₹96 lakh, with ₹8 lakh each for Best Actor (Male) and Best Actor (Female). The Best Film award carried ₹25 lakh, while Best Director and Best Debut Film of a Director carried ₹15 lakh each.
For Maniktala, Arifa therefore arrived at a festival attempting to establish a new cinematic identity for the region — one where Kashmir is not simply a location in somebody else’s story, but a source of stories in its own right.
And perhaps that is the film’s strongest contribution.
Arifa asks audiences to look at Kashmir not from a distance, but through the window of one family home — where the Valley becomes a space for love, loss, memory and the possibility of making peace with the past.
