Picket 43

Hareendranath, standing watch at an Indian picket in Kashmir, comes across Mushraff, a Pakistani soldier on the other side of the line. In time the two form a friendship nobody would have expected and tell each other things they have told no one else. What stands between them is not language or distance but the orders that put them opposite each other. The film presents enmity as a line drawn by states and loneliness as the condition the two soldiers share. The long empty hours at the post are the real material of the film; both men pass the time talking, and that talk turns the line between them into an everyday thing. Prithviraj Sukumaran plays the lead in Major Ravi’s hundred and thirty five minute Indian film, completed in 2015.