Sheen depicts woes of Kashmir in 'Sheen'

When "Sheen", a film on Kashmir's tragedy, is released in mid-January 2004, it will be the first one to portray the agony of the victims through its heroine, a newcomer to the Hindi silver screen.

"It's a film that is based on reality and shows a young, innocent and carefree girl maturing into a responsible woman in a matter of days when her family has to flee from their home in the wake of violence in the Valley," says the leading lady of the film, also known as Sheen. It was a coincidence that producer-director Ashok Pandit offered 23-year-old Sheen a role in his film after noticing her talent in a small play in her home town.

Her real name which she revealed to Gulf News in an interview is Samreen Zaidi which was changed to Sheen after Samreen was confused with Simran, when she made her debut in a Telugu film, Itlu Sravani Subramaniam.

Made in 30 days, the film turned out to be a super hit. Pandit says she fitted the bill with her innocent looks and a flair for the languages – both Hindi and Urdu, since she hailed from Lucknow – a city known for its literary and poetic excellence. "We could not shoot in Kashmir because of a surge in violence but Ashok himself a victim, and a Kashmiri friend described the land and its people. I also saw a documentary on the travails of Kashmiris who fled and understood their pain and anguish," she told Gulf News in an interview.

"It was the biggest mass exodus and ethnic cleansing that happened after the partition of 1947," says Pandit "and the film, a Sahara Presentation, tries to put this reality on the big screen for the first time with complete honesty."

He also makes a point that the trend of films was to glorify terrorists and gangsters as heroes and that is why "my film is solely based on the victim's point of view." The pathos is evoked by some superb music by Nadeem-Shravan and almost all the singing sensations of Hindi films.