Ashvin Kumar’s “Noor” receives APSA Children’s Film Fund(Dear Cinema)

Noor, a screenplay written and to-be directed by Ashvin Kumar, has won a grant from the Asia Pacific Screen Academy Children’s Film Fund.

“Noor, set in Kashmir, allows a young audience to experience a conflict zone through the eyes of a child in a revealing rite of passage story,” the Jury noted in its citation.

APSA Children’s Film Fund is a collaboration between Asia Pacific Screen Academy and Manila-based 4 Boys Films, providing two AUD 20,000 grants annually to APSA Academy members. It aims to provide script development support to children’s feature films that carry positive, life affirming messages specifically for and about children of Asia Pacific.

Noor Kumar revolves around ten year old Noor whose father ‘disappeared’ after the Indian army arrested him in war-torn Kashmir. But when she goes looking for him, she stumbles upon mass-graves that implicate the Indian army. When her story makes national news, she herself is arrested and made to ‘disappear’.

Noor is Ashvin Kumar’s first fiction feature about Kashmir; after Inshallah Football andInshallah, Kashmir that picked up a national award each in 2012 and 2013.

Noor was part of NFDC Film Bazaar’s co-production market in 2012 and the Independent Film Week, the Project Forum of the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) this year.