After portraying a young mother in the recently released Tu Hai Mera Sunday, Rasika Dugal will play Ishrat, a Kashmiri mother, in the upcoming drama, Hamid, produced by SaReGaMa.
The film talks of Kashmir’s conflict zones through an emotional mother-son journey, and an eight-year-old boy’s quest to find his father. The situation in Kashmir is worsening day by day. The entire humanity is put to shame with the condition of Kashmiris.
Rasika took up the daunting task to play the character of a mother whose husband is lost and her young son is on a quest to find her father. Though we have seen Rasika Dugal playing the similar character in her award-winning short film The School Bag, here Hamid takes the audience to a different level of performance by Rasika and child artist Talha Reshi.
To prepare for her role Rasika began her homework by reading up and watching documentaries on the life of Kashmir’s ‘Lady of Iron’, Parveena Ahangar, the founder of Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for her pacifism and human rights activism.
The actress was also very influenced by Iffat Fatima’s 26-minute documentary, ‘Where Have You Hidden My New Moon Crescent’, which tells the story of Mughal Masi, who died after waiting 20 years for her son to return.
When asked Rasika Dugal about her research she said,
“It’s a part of my job as an actor to do research work on a part I am going to play. That is the most basic thing that I can do. The more important thing is to somehow find a connection with people and situations which are seemingly beyond your own realm of experience. I always find it useful to accept to myself honestly that I will always be an outsider to another person’s experience but, at the same time, I am craving to be let in. That leaves me both vulnerable and curious. But at the end of the day, I can only do my work to the best of my knowledge and hope that I have been sensitive to the people whose story we are attempting to tell especially when it’s about people who have lived in conflict for so long”
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