The arrival of a movie from Kashmir is proof that a film can come from anywhere, because there is apparently no film industry to speak of in that disputed area. “Zero Bridge” carries unusual interest just for that reason.
It also happens to be a very good picture, a portrait of a classic movie hustler trying to survive. And survival — or escape — is about as big as dreams are allowed to get in this film’s depressed landscape.
The protagonist is 17-year-old Dilawar, played by a nonprofessional named Mohamad Imran Tapa. We meet him hanging around on a security bridge, not the last time he will be portrayed as suspended between two worlds.
A motherless child raised by his brutal uncle, Dilawar is interested in petty crime as a way of making some money. He has little experience, but he manages to steal a backpack from a young woman; as chance would have it, he later meets this unsuspecting woman and becomes friends with her.
She is played by Taniya Khan, who could easily turn into a movie star if anybody in Hollywood (or Bollywood) notices. Her character has visited the United States, plays chess, and listens to classical music, and to Dilawar she represents a completely new idea about what life could be.
But she’s stuck in Kashmir, too, not least because somebody stole her passport: It was in her backpack, of course. Her friendship with Dilawar, a rough-edged but intelligent kid, is more a meeting between two restless souls than a romance.
The director of this film is Tariq Tapa, an American of Kashmiri stock (the leading man is his cousin). He is well aware that his ancestral region lives with incredible contradictions: Its Himalayan setting makes it one of the most beautiful places on earth (Dilawar’s encounter ferrying two U.S. tourists around is revealing), but it has also spent decades in a violent tug-of-war between India and Pakistan.
Tapa keeps his movie at ground level, so the larger questions are only present in fleeting glimpses. His fable is also about more universal struggles, most prominently the need for enough freedom to reach for a self- determined future, or maybe just the pursuit of happiness.
“Zero Bridge”
A hard-luck hustler in Kashmir gets a glimpse of a better sort of life when he meets the very woman whose backpack he recently stole. This film by Kashmiri-American director Tariq Tapa is at the ground level, where larger questions about the embattled region give way to more human pursuits. In Urdu, with English subtitles.
Rating: Not rated; probably PG-13 for violence
Showing: Northwest Film Forum
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