HAIDER

Vishal Bhardwaj

India

- 2014

After adapting ‘Macbeth’ for the screen in ‘Maqbool’ (2003) and ‘Othello’ in ‘Omkara’ (2006), Bhardwaj closed his Shakespearean trilogy in 2014 with this adaptation of ‘Hamlet’. Haider is a young man who returns home to Kashmir after receiving news of the disappearance of his father, who has been taken away by the security forces on charges of harbouring terrorists. On his arrival, Haider despairs at finding no clue to his father’s whereabouts, while he discovers that his mother is having an affair with his own uncle.

Vishal Bhardwaj

Indian filmmaker, screenwriter, writer and composer, trained at the Hindu College of Delhi University. In the mid-1980s he began a fruitful career as a soundtrack composer, and in 1999 he made his debut behind the camera with the TV series ‘Gubbare’. In 2002 he directed his debut feature film, ‘Makdee’, and a year later he directed ‘Maqbool’, which in 2012 was selected by Seminci as part of a retrospective on ‘The Other Bollywood Cinema’. His subsequent filmography includes titles such as ‘The Blue Umbrella’ (2005), ‘Omkara’ (2006), the short film ‘Blood Brothers’ (2007), ‘Kaminey’ (2009), ‘7 Khoon Maaf’ (2011), ‘Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola’ (2013), ‘Haider’ (2014), which won five International Indian Film Academy awards), ‘Rangoon’ (2017) and ‘Pataakha’ (2018).