Aijaz Khan’s Hamid, is a story about a young boy’s quest to find his missing father amid a conflict-stricken Kashmir.
The movie revolves around ‘Hamid’, played by Talha Arshad Reshi, an eight-year-old Kashmiri boy who hearing that number 786 is “god’s number”, assumes that it is the phone number to Allah and believes that by calling up Allah, he will help him find his missing father. In this process, ‘Hamid’ uses his father’s old mobile phone, and puts together many combinations around the number 786, and finally manages to connect to one - that of Abhay, a hard-knuckled CRPF soldier, who is dreary with the situation in Kashmir.
‘Hamid’ believes that Abhay, played by Vikas Kumar, is the Allah he is looking for and starts an unlikely friendship with him, with Abhay also assuming the role of a life-coach, as well as the ‘God’ trying to answer a young boy’s deeply insightful questions. In some ways, this is the director’s way of humanizing ‘God’ and our frustration with ‘God’ for not always being to answer our questions.
Meanwhile ‘Hamid’s mother, played by Rasika Dugal, finds herself in the difficult position of raising her son alone, after her husband goes missing without notice. As a result, while she does try to protect him, she is often distracted and frustrated and can’t give him the answers he is looking for.
As described by PTI: “Hamid and Abhay, torn apart by politics and bound by a sense of loss, unknowingly and unintentionally, find a way to complete each other’s life, against the rampant violence in Kashmir.”
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