Saffron Kingdom: film screening plus Q and A

The film, Saffron Kingdom, will be screened with an introduction by Dr Hafsa Kanjwal. The screening will be followed by a Q and A with Arfat Sheikh (director) and Dr Kanjwal.

Saffron Kingdom traces the journey of a Kashmiri family uprooted by occupation and scattered across continents. Based on true events, it follows Masrat, a woman scarred by the violence of 1990s Kashmir and the disappearance of her husband, as she rebuilds her life in exile. By 2019, she and her son, Rizwan, find themselves in Atlanta, carrying with them the echoes of a homeland that no longer exists as they remember it. Together, they navigate the haunting inheritance of loss, the fracture of identity, and the relentless longing for return, a struggle made more painful by the revocation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status. Saffron Kingdom is both a story of exile and endurance, of how memory and belonging survive even when the land itself is taken away.

Arfat Sheikh is a filmmaker and producer whose work explores identity, resilience, and justice through deeply personal and politically resonant narratives. Born in Kashmir — a conflict zone that continues to shape his worldview — his storytelling often reflects themes of displacement, memory, and the human cost of conflict. His debut feature film, Saffron Kingdom, has earned widespread acclaim, winning Best Feature Film at the Chicago Filmmakers Award, LA Film and Documentary Awards, Melbourne Independent Film Festival, Wake Forest Film Festival, and the Anatolian International Film Awards. The film also won Best Writer for a Feature Film at the Florida South Asian Film Festival and received nominations at the London Director Awards and ARRF Barcelona International Film Festival. Arfat’s work and perspectives have sparked critical conversations and have been featured by BBC, TRT World, and The Independent. Having lived in Srinagar, Delhi, Leeds, Atlanta, and now Washington, D.C., Arfat continues to craft narratives that transcend borders and challenge dominant perspectives through cinema.

Hafsa Kanjwal is an associate professor of South Asian History in the Department of History at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on the history of the modern world, South Asian history, and Islam in the Modern World. As a historian of modern Kashmir, she is the author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press, 2023), which examines how the Indian and Kashmir governments utilized state-building to entrench India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir in the aftermath of Partition. Colonizing Kashmir historicizes India’s occupation of Kashmir through processes of emotional integration, development, normalization, and empowerment to highlight the new hierarchies of power and domination that emerged in the aftermath of decolonization. The book won the 2025 Bernard Cohn Book Prize for best first book on South Asia by the Association of Asian Studies.

Registration

Please follow the link at the top of the page to register. Venue details will be sent following registration.

Image Credit

Daffodil Studios, promotional poster of the film Saffron Kingdom