Autumn
(Harud)

Harud marks Aamir Bashir’s debut as a film director, although he is better known as an actor. The season of the film title evokes the respite that autumn seeks to preserve between the fires of summer and winter’s harshness, more metaphorically between war and peace. Yet the leaves fall, stifling and evacuating all rumour of gunshots and explosions. In the season’s lull, Rafiq and his family still struggle to find peace following the long absence of the eldest son Tauriq, a photographer who has left them without news since his disappearance in Kashmir on the border of India and Pakistan, a region prey to insurgency and unrest. JB