Kaafir The Film: When cinema starts to bet in favor of a safer, marketable, digestible drama than its soul!

Rather than evolving Kaafir that once challenged biases, its re-edit into a film mirrors a growing trend in Indian OTT which is to dilute, sanitise, and sell.

At 135 minutes, Kaafir: The Film reduces the poignant, layered 2019 web series into a hollow, agenda-driven product—an unfortunate casualty of keeping up with current trends of repackaging content into re-releases. What once spanned over eight episodes and tenderly explored trauma, humanity, and prejudice across borders is now rendered into a truncated, almost incoherent summary that leaves its soul behind.

The original series told the true-story-inspired tale of Kainaaz Akhtar (Dia Mirza), a Pakistani woman who accidentally crosses the Line of Control and ends up imprisoned in Kashmir for over seven years. Alongside her is her daughter, Seher, born and raised within the prison walls, denied the identity of either country. Through the lens of Vedant Rathod (Mohit Raina)—a journalist turned lawyer seeking redemption—the show unfolds its profoundly emotional and political commentary. Imagine if Bajrangi Bhaijaan met Veer Zara, but only in the sensitive area of Kashmir! 

What made the original so powerful was not just the plot, but the patience of its storytelling. Within its meditatively picturesque frames, it allowed its characters to breathe, evolve, and reveal their brokenness slowly. Showing how a persistent, manufactured narrative works so efficiently that words tend to seamlessly go synonymous with an image, like a “terrorist” or “Pakistan” instantly conjure up a picture of a gun-wielding figure, not a struggling woman or a grieving mother. It is this exact argument that Vedant makes in his closing speech in the show—one that hits hard, not with patriotic fervor, but with a plea for humanity. The film, however, in an inexplicable act of narrative sabotage, chops this speech mid-way, leaving behind a disjointed monologue stripped of its potency.

And this isn’t an isolated instance. Much of the film’s runtime is built on stitching together key plot points like bullet notes in a PowerPoint presentation—void of continuity, emotional arc, character development, or the nuance that made the series timeless. The resulting experience feels more like a rushed recap than a standalone story. What else could you expect from a film that pushes to fit a six-hour storyline into a two-and-a-half-hour window? 

This raises a pressing question: Why would Zee5, which already hosts the original series, choose to release a heavily edited film version on the same platform less than five years later? Is it to reiterate the message to a newer audience or is it simply a marketing gimmick dressed as a noble act? Perhaps it is an attempt to ride the wave of nostalgia and trending re-releases, hoping some may stumble upon the original through this stripped-down version. But even so, why dilute the message?

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Kaafir was never just a love story or courtroom drama—it was a soft yet searing exploration of how prejudice is internalised, how religion and nationalism are weaponised, and how borders—human-made and arbitrary—wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary people. It imagined a world where humanity could prevail even in the most militarised zones, where a mother is not defined by her nationality, and a child is not punished for the circumstances of her birth.

The show wasn’t just an informative drama either that took an effort to highlight the plight of people who accidentally end up crossing the border unknowingly and spend years in jails on both sides of the LOC. It was also a rare piece of media that humanised Pakistanis without resorting to binaries. It offered an empathetic and soft gaze into the lives of Muslims, an increasingly rare phenomenon in contemporary Indian storytelling. Perhaps this is why the film version is so disappointing—it chooses safety over bravery, trimming away the edges that may provoke discomfort or debate.

There is irony, too, in what the film chooses to omit. An entire episode in the original series was devoted to exploring the psyche of a man who assaults Kainaaz—an episode that doesn’t just show an act of violence but builds upto it. Hence, its reverberating consequences that are also omitted felt stronger because when Kainaaz hesitates to get close to Vedant later in the series, we’re offered a heart-wrenching look at trauma—how it lives in the body, how it interferes with intimacy, how it isn’t erased by love but must be carried alongside it. None of this survives in the film. Not even the anger of the people who lost their own and take it out on the mother-daughter seen as a threat just because they are Pakistani!

This absence makes one acutely aware of the power of long-form storytelling and how it gives space to build the fabric of characters. A lawyer falling for his client isn’t a new trope, but Vedant and Kainaaz’s love story wasn’t just written in the stars romantic—it was reflective. Two broken people shaped by their pasts: Vedant, haunted by the guilt of having freed the militant who killed his brother, and Kainaaz, abandoned by a husband who left her for being barren. They didn’t complete each other; they made them see themselves. And sometimes, that’s more profound than a happily ever after with each other. They met only to be separated but just after they changed each other. But even this complexity is flattened in the film, which packages their story as a sentimental drama rather than a meditation on forgiveness, loss, and the need for closure.

What’s even more startling is that this re-edit does not correct or evolve the blind spots of the original. Instead, it erases them altogether, seemingly afraid of public reaction in an environment where anything remotely humanising the 'other' is seen as a betrayal. There's a chilling resonance with a line from the series itself: “Maarne waale se zyada bachaane wale hain iss desh mein, bas sab chup rehna seekh gaye hain”. It’s this quietness, this retreat into silence, that feels more pronounced in 2025 than it did in 2019. 

Hence, even this tokenistic, croaking voice feels oddly brave today. Because when laughing at a joke can also have dire consequences, a feeble attempt to say something feels like resistance. Perhaps that’s the only merit of this re-release—it may reignite conversations, provoke comparisons, and push people to revisit the original series. If the film acts as a gateway to that, then maybe it serves a purpose.

So if you’ve come across Kaafir: The Film and found yourself underwhelmed, watch the series. It is not just a story of a woman unjustly imprisoned but of the prejudices we inherit, the love we deny ourselves, and the belief that even in a world this divided, empathy can still exist. It is a reminder that “Kaafir” is a word used to exclude, but in the act of reclaiming it, lies the quiet defiance of saying: I am human too just not boxed in one perceivable idea!

Strangely enough, this reminder is more essential now because it also pinpoints how the streaming space back in the day was more about fostering nuanced storytelling than being scared to tell a story!

Kaafir: The Film is currently streaming on Zee5!