I recently watched Songs of Paradise on Amazon Prime, a film that has already sparked a range of responses. The film is set in the 1950s and 1960s Srinagar. It follows Noor Begum, a young Kashmiri woman with an extraordinary singing voice, who dreams of becoming a celebrated artist despite the disapproval of her conservative family. Along the way, she encounters resistance, patronage, love and betrayal, while her music becomes the central thread of her personal journey. 

Among younger viewers – particularly those who have grown up detached from often turbulent historical context of Kashmir –there is a certain enthusiasm. They are embracing the film for its musical nostalgia, the aesthetics of bygone eras, and the emotional pull of melodies that evoke a cultural memory, however selectively represented. For this generation, the film appears to offer a glimpse of Kashmir’s romanticised past through music, a past they might have only heard about from parents or grandparents.

In contrast, a more seasoned audience, many of whom carry lived experiences of the socio-political upheavals in Kashmir, has been less forgiving. For them, the film is a diluted representation, one that conveniently sidesteps the uncomfortable truths embedded in the region’s history. This audience has criticised the film’s glaring omissions, its reluctance to grapple with ground realities, and its decision to settle for surface-level storytelling.

For example, a popular Kashmir-based podcast (74 East Podcast) remarked that film downplayed and falsified the story of Raj Begum –  a Kashmiri playback and folk singer who was also known as the 'Melody Queen of Kashmir'. Another comparison came with a 2016 documentary made on the life and music of Raj Begum (Her Theme of Freedom - Raj Begum - The Melody Queen of Kashmir), and how the story arc followed in Songs of Paradise is fictional, rather than being based on the reality of her life. Most of these comments and observations have been shared on Facebook and X, among other platforms.  

I will not revisit every critique that has already been made in detail. Instead, I want to focus on a few key aspects of Songs of Paradise that stood out to me, and which, I believe, are central to understanding why this film feels hollow despite its potential.

1. A conscious omission of context

The most striking flaw in Songs of Paradise is its intentional avoidance of the socio-political realities of the time in which the story is set. Cinema is not created in a vacuum, and when a film chooses to tell the story of a Kashmiri woman’s journey in mid-20th century Kashmir, without acknowledging the layered politics of that era, it is not an oversight – it is an act of conscious omission.

The film is set in a period when India and Pakistan had only recently come into being after Partition, and the region of Kashmir was anything but stable. Sheikh Abdullah had launched ambitious land reforms that transformed rural society, but his eventual dismissal and arrest in 1953 plunged the valley into unrest and political uncertainty. Throughout the 1950s, the unresolved territorial conflict between India and Pakistan continued to simmer, bringing with it a growing atmosphere of uncertainty and creeping militarisation in daily life.

Yet the film simplifies this backdrop. It depicts a homogeneous Muslim Kashmiri milieu, overlooking the reality that Srinagar in the 1950s had a significant Kashmiri Pandit population – in fact, a dense community lived close to Begum’s own home. This erasure flattens the city’s plural social fabric at the very moment it mattered most.

This erasure is not neutral. The decision to strip away context seems designed to make the film more palatable to patrons, buyers, and audiences who might prefer a sanitised, “safe” narrative. The cost of such sanitisation is immense: the story progression becomes hollow, divorced from the very forces that would have shaped Noor Begum’s life. What remains is a fragile fiction that floats above reality, lacking the depth and density that a narrative of this scale demands.

Kashmir’s cultural and political history is inseparable from its artistic evolution. To tell a story of a Kashmiri woman singer without addressing these interconnections is akin to telling the story of jazz in America without acknowledging slavery and racial discrimination. The omission is not merely aesthetic – it fundamentally distorts the truth of the story being told.

2. Cultural and linguistic misplacements

Another aspect of disappointment lies in the film’s representation of cultural and linguistic textures. At no point did I encounter a character who felt rooted in the credible cultural, social, or linguistic fabric of Kashmir.

Instead, the dialogues waver awkwardly between a caricatured Urdu – delivered with strained pronunciations – and an absence of any recognisable Kashmiri cadence. The result is jarring. It creates a sense of distance, as if the characters are performing borrowed identities rather than inhabiting lived ones.

Throughout the film, whether it is Noor’s caricatured accent, her mother’s, or her husband’s, there is no commonality between them. Noor speaks a heavily-accented Urdu, similar to how earlier Indian filmmakers have portrayed native Kashmiris in films featuring the Shammi Kapoor and others. At the same time, the liberal elites in the film – Noor’s husband, her mentor, the music composer – all speak fluent Urdu as if language had some class fidelity.

This lack of research is painfully evident. It reduces what could have been deeply immersive cultural moments into superficial performances. Music, language, dress and everyday gestures are all vital in grounding a story in its context, and here all of them feel loosely stitched together without authenticity.

When you strip away linguistic fidelity, you strip away belongingness. The characters are left floating – recognisable to none, representing no one.

3. A faltering narrative arc

The narrative falters under its own ambition. What exactly is the point of Noor Begum’s story? Are we to believe that her journey sparked a cultural revolution? That she became a torchbearer of women’s freedom in Kashmir? If so, where is the historical truth to anchor that claim?

The story begins with some promise, offering glimpses of a strong character rising against odds. For a moment, it seems like we might witness the complex story of an artist whose struggles mirror those of her society. Yet, as the film progresses, its focus splinters. The narrative arc rises with some energy but collapses midway, never quite committing to a single, coherent direction. The ambition is large, but the execution is scattered, leaving the audience uncertain about what exactly the film is trying to say.

4. The elite gaze

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Songs of Paradise is its reinforcement of the elite gaze. Once again – frustratingly and predictably – a Kashmiri woman’s agency is framed through elite intervention. Noor's struggles are validated only when an elite man marries her or when his upper-class aunt provides her with prophetic guidance.

A telling scene occurs when Noor, distraught after being publicly humiliated for singing, contemplates giving up. It is not her own inner resolve or support from fellow musicians that revives her – it is the patronage of the elite household that validates her art. Her agency is mediated through privilege, as if the struggles of working-class women cannot stand on their own unless endorsed by the powerful. 

5. The persistent binary in Kashmir-centric cinema

Mainstream fiction films on Kashmir have, for decades, relied on a reductive binary. The binary is always the same – if a character is forward-looking, it is attributed to their education, modernity or liberal values. But if a character is regressive, that burden is placed on their identity as Kashmiri Muslims.

In Mission Kashmir (2000), the protagonist Altaf is shown as the victim of militancy, but not so later in the film, his choices are framed as a product of his Kashmiri Muslim identity, which is vulnerable to violence and regression. At the same time the character of his father and mother, are associated with Indian State which also embody liberal family ideals and are forward looking.

Even in the relatively nuanced and humane Haider (2014), this binary is visible. Educated and “modern” Kashmiris like Haider (returning from university) are portrayed as critical thinkers, while ordinary Kashmiri Muslim villagers are often shown as swayed by forces such as militants, religious leaders, communal passions.

A similar transgression is noticeable in this film. For example, Noor’s mother is portrayed as a rigid traditionalist who cannot see beyond “family honour,” while her elite patrons represent open-mindedness and progress. The binary is clear: liberation comes from outside the Kashmiri household, while oppression is internal.

Cinema continues to recycle these tropes without interrogating their implications, reducing Kashmiri lives to shallow templates instead of exploring their layered truths.

6. The Indian saviour complex

Another trope that Songs of Paradise indulges heavily in is the “Indian saviour” complex. The film’s closing act doubles down on another familiar trope: the “outsider” who rescues Kashmiri culture. Noor’s legacy is rediscovered not by her own community but by a liberal Indian researcher – who might have been a young fan of Noor’s music but an outsider and not a Kashmiri. He not only revives her music but also launches the career of Noor's granddaughter.

In one of the final scenes, the granddaughter performs Noor’s songs on a modern stage. The implication is clear: left to themselves, Kashmiris might have let their art fade, but enlightened outsiders arrive just in time to preserve it. 

This is a familiar post-colonial hangover: Kashmiris are depicted as waiting for enlightened outsiders – often Indian, elite and liberal – to rescue them from their obscurity. This trope has been exhausted to the point of insult. It disregards the fact that ordinary Kashmiris have long safeguarded their art, their memory and their resilience without external patronage.

7. A missed cinematic opportunity

The story of Noor Begum could have been an extraordinarily powerful one. It had the potential to re-engage with Kashmir’s troubled musical past, to showcase the courage of a woman who refused to surrender her art, and to explore the intersections of music, politics, and gender in a land perpetually negotiating its identity.

Instead, the film settles for the easy path – flattening struggles into tropes, erasing context and elevating elites as saviours. It hijacks the stories of common people, strips them of their truth, and packages them for consumption in ways that reinforce stereotypes rather than challenge them.

Songs of Paradise is emblematic of a wider cinematic malaise, where the eagerness to appeal to outside patrons outweighs the responsibility to tell grounded, authentic stories. The saddest part is not the failure itself, but the possibilities that were lost along the way.

Mohammad Irfan Dar is a filmmaker from Srinagar, Kashmir. He is the Founder and CEO of Red Stone Films based in India and UAE.

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