Zero Bridge

Directed by: Tariq Tapa

India | 96 minutes | Unrated

In the tradition of hard-hitting neo-realist filmmaking comes Zero Bridge, the debut feature of Tariq Tapa, a US-born filmmaker of Kashmiri/Jewish-American descent. Having spent his childhood summers in India-controlled Kashmir with his father's family, he was committed to making a film of quotidian life, far from Bollywood fantasies and Western news reports of terrorism: Dilawar is a teenage pickpocket whose escape plans are complicated when he develops an uneasy alliance with a woman (herself fleeing an arranged marriage) whose passport he has stolen. Zero Bridge is a story of two young people's struggle to retain their humanity, despite poverty, the traditional culture into which they've been born, and the fatalism, sexism and casual cruelty of their families.