Srinagar, Sep 10: When the first International Film Festival of Jammu & Kashmir (IFFJK) opened at SKICC on September 7, it was, as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah described it, “an idea being tested, an invitation, an experiment and, above all, a hope”. Four days later, as the curtains came down on Thursday, that experiment had found both an audience and a purpose.
The numbers tell one part of the story. Over 1,100 film entries from more than 80 countries, 135 films screened across Srinagar, Jammu and Gulmarg, and a line-up of masterclasses, panel discussions and cultural performances featuring names like Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Imtiaz Ali, Ramesh Sippy, Pankaj Tripathi, Santosh Sivan, Fatima Sana Shaikh and Usha Uthup. For a maiden edition, the scale was ambitious and the response overwhelming.
But the deeper significance of IFFJK lies beyond numbers. For decades, Kashmir’s relationship with cinema was one of separation—its landscapes travelled to audiences through screens, while the industry itself stayed away. This week, in a sense, the screen came back to Kashmir. The presence of filmmakers, actors and technicians from across India and abroad, interacting with local aspirants, suggested the beginning of a reconnection that the government hopes to institutionalise.
The government’s intent was visible in the policy conversations that ran alongside the screenings. The J&K Film Policy, single-window clearances, financial incentives linked to shooting days and local expenditure, and the push for local employment—all were discussed as practical tools to transform the region from a scenic backdrop into a working film destination. The India Cine Hub portal, as MoS I&B L. Murugan noted, now allows filmmakers to secure permissions through a single platform, removing a long-standing bottleneck.
The festival also placed local stories at the centre. The J&K Select category, won by Kapil Mattoo’s Tasrufdaar, showcased five films exploring memory, displacement, identity and heritage. Performances of Bande Pather, Kashmir’s centuries-old folk theatre, reminded audiences that the Valley’s storytelling traditions predate cinema by generations. The message was clear: Kashmir has stories worth telling, not just locations worth filming.
Yet, the real test begins now. A festival can create momentum, but it cannot sustain an industry on its own. The Chief Minister’s call for IFFJK to grow into a year-round platform—for screening, training and collaboration—is the right ambition. So is the emphasis on creating a local workforce of cinematographers, sound engineers and technicians, so that filmmakers arriving with a script can find everything else in Kashmir.
For the youth of the Valley, the festival offered something intangible but invaluable: exposure. A young writer meeting a director, an aspiring filmmaker learning from a professional, two strangers discovering a shared creative language—these connections, as Omar noted, are what give a festival its lasting value.
IFFJK 2026 did not just celebrate cinema. It declared that Kashmir intends to be part of the conversation, not just its backdrop. Whether that declaration becomes a movement will depend on what happens between now and the next edition. The festival has set the stage. The work of building an industry must now follow.
