Supporters, including several high-ranking government officials, have lauded the film for finally giving a voice to the displaced Pandit community and showing an "unembellished truth" that had been ignored for decades. It won National Film Awards for National Integration and Best Supporting Actress (Pallavi Joshi).
Krishna’s quest for truth amidst a university environment depicted as sympathetic to separatist ideologies.
Graphic and gut-wrenching depictions of the violence faced by the Kashmiri Pandit community during the insurgency, leading to their mass exodus from the Kashmir Valley. Key Themes Graphic and gut-wrenching depictions of the violence faced
Critics and some scholars have accused the film of being "vulgar propaganda" and "Islamophobic". They argue that it uses a "fictional take on real events" to create a monolithic, villainous portrayal of the Muslim community while ignoring the broader human rights context of the region.
The film follows the journey of , a young college student who is shielded from the true circumstances of his parents' deaths by his grandfather, Pushkar Nath Pandit . After Pushkar's death, Krishna travels to Kashmir to scatter his ashes and begins to uncover a different version of his family history than the "accident" he was previously told about. The narrative alternates between two timelines: The film follows the journey of , a
Through characters like Pushkar Nath Pandit, the film emphasizes the deep emotional connection to one's homeland and the trauma of being rendered a refugee in one's own country.
While many events in the film are based on real-life incidents—such as the killings of B.K. Ganjoo and Girija Tikoo—some family members of the victims and historians have contested the film's specific portrayals and the way disparate events were consolidated into a single timeline for dramatic effect. Legacy and Impact and past political administrations.
A central theme is the claim that the suffering and "genocide" of Kashmiri Pandits were deliberately suppressed by mainstream media, academia, and past political administrations.