This is a film we’ve never seen before: Syeed explores the heart of a rarely visited landscape, and the souls of the resilient Kashmiri people. This is an amazing film.
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Village VoiceSerena Donadoni
Village VoiceSerena Donadoni
Valley of Saints is a marvel of neorealism, with nonprofessional actors facing the same hurdles as their characters and writer/director Syeed improvising in shifting circumstances.
Valley of Saints finds a poignant humanity in this chaste romance, which awakens in Gulzar a wondrous sense of possibility, along with a new awareness of the world’s complexity.
The film’s bucolic mood is constantly threatened by the prevailing reality of violence and injustice in the region, a creeping tension that Syeed carefully calibrates to emphasize the tenuousness of his characters’ relationships.