Kashmir is back on the Bollywood map,3 units shoot in the valley simultaneously

It looks Bollywood’s long-drawn romance with Kashmir has been renewed. Shootings in the Valley had stopped during the peak of militancy.

But now with a change in the political atmosphere in the Valley, more and more film crews are seen in and around Kashmir.

In December 2014, there were three Bollywood units shooting simultaneously in the Valley. Besides the high profile ‘Fitoor’, there was Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘Junooniyat’ and Agnidev Chatterjee’s ‘Tere Aane Se’.

All three units are pleased to be shooting in India’s own paradise.

Vivek Agnihotri, the director of Junooniyat says, “We’ve faced some problems. But overall it’s all fine.I’ve been shooting here with Pulkit Samrat and Yami Gautam. In fact there was elections on the day when we were on location. It was all peaceful.”

Akshay Oberoi who has a prominent part in Abhishek Kapoor’s Fitoor(Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations transposed to Kashmir) vouches for peace. “We’ve been shooting in and around Srinagar and the Dal Lake. It’s all very peaceful around here. We haven’t encountered any militancy around here. Of course there is a lot of security bandobast considering stars like Rekha and Katrina Kaif are shooting.”

Purab Kohli who is shooting a romantic song with Rituparna Sensgupta in Gulmarg for Tere Aane Se, says “The entire landscape is covered in snow. It is freezing. We had completed the shooting. But we decided to add this one song shot in Kashmir. The film is set in 1980s. So I am dressed accordingly. It’s fun. But freezing.”