IFFI 2025: A father, a son, and an unfinished film about Kashmir

GOA: Some legacies are inherited. Others are rescued from the wreckage. At the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) today, Shaad Ali sat across from his father, Muzaffar Ali, and walked him through a career that began with childhood sketches and ended—provisionally—with an unfinished film about Kashmir.

The session, titled Cinema and Culture: Reflections from Two Eras, was moderated by Shaad himself, with filmmaker Ravi Kottarakara opening proceedings with a tribute to the duo. What followed was less interview than excavation: memory, failure, poetry, and the stubborn refusal to let go of a dream called Zooni.

Muzaffar Ali, whose Umrao Jaan remains a touchstone of Indian cinema, traced his origins not to film but to art and poetry. Cinema, he said, came later—a space where imagination could escape the “predictable imagery of mainstream storytelling.” Calcutta opened that world. Gaman, his 1978 film about migration and displacement, won the Silver Peacock at IFFI but left him unmoved. “Success did not make me feel empowered,” he said. “It only reminded me that new struggles were always waiting ahead.”

The craft, he explained, grew from rootedness. Music flowed from poetry and philosophy. Umrao Jaan’s melodies demanded humility and collaboration. “Poetry makes you dream, and the poet must dream with us,” he said.

Then came Zooni, the bilingual Kashmir project that collapsed under the weight of logistics, culture, and seasons. Muzaffar Ali called it “a dream beyond many dreams” and painful in its failure. But Shaad is now restoring it—revisiting negatives, soundtracks, and his father’s cinematic vision. A video titled Zooni: Lost and Found, screened at the session, captured their journey: dreams, setbacks, and the hope of reimagining what was lost.

During the Q&A, Muzaffar Ali was asked about reviving films that reflect Kashmir’s real culture, not just its peaks and valleys as a backdrop for songs. His answer was sharp: “Kashmir has everything. You don’t need to invite talent, you need to grow it there. Zooni, he insisted, was conceived as exactly that kind of film.

Whether the son can finish what the father started remains uncertain. But the inheritance is clear: cinema as devotion, not decoration. And some dreams, it turns out, refuse to stay buried.