Lamhaa

Cast

Casting

Karisma Kapoor was finalised to play the female lead, but she opted out at the last minute because she feared shooting in the troubled Kashmir valley where a significant part was going to be shot. Bipasha Basu, Ameesha Patel and Sonam Kapoor were considered for the same role, and Basu was finalised to play the female lead.

Filming and post-production

Filming began in Kashmir on 25 October 2008. During November 2008, Bipasha Basu left the shooting hours before Sanjay Dutt landed in Srinagar to start shooting with her — without informing the unit. They decided to shoot the action sequences in Manali instead. After her abrupt departure, producer Bunty Walia and director Rahul Dholakia asked Basu to arrive on the set on 4 January 2009 and that they would cast Vidya Balan as a replacement in case she does not comply. Basu then arrived on the specified date after security arrangements were tightened and explained that she got scared in Kashmir after the crowd gathering became uncontrollable.

In May 2009, Rahul Dholakia collapsed on the sets and shooting was delayed up to 25 May after doctors advised Dholakia bed rest for one month. Eventually the entire film was shot in sets of Kashmir erected in Film City, Mumbai, for which production designer Wasiq Khan brought in two truckloads of chinar tree leaves from Kashmir.

Critical reception

Lamhaa received mixed reviews from critics.

On the review-aggregation website ReviewGang, it scored 5.5/10 based on 9 reviews. Sukanya Verma of Rediff rated it 3/5 and said, "Utimately, Lamhaa's relevance lies in its ability to give you an overview, even if it's a crammed one, about the ugliness of greed and intolerance through the example of Kashmir." Noyon Jyoti Parasara of AOL rated it 3.5/5 and stated, "Very truly it does delve right into the primary problem. But this time, unlike most other movies made on the same subject, it does not stay on a superficial level." Nikhat Kazmi of Times of India rated it 3.5/5 saying, "Lamhaa is a no-holds-barred look at the multi-layered turmoil in Kashmir, with so many real-life references that you end up with just one conclusion: now here's a real film about a real problem."

Mayank Shekhar of the Hindustan Times rated it 2/5 and said, "It's not easy to make sense of Kashmir. It's harder still then to make sense of this film."

Soundtrack

The songs featured in the film are given by Mithoon with lyrics by Sayeed Quadri and Amitabh Varma.

Track listing

"Madno Re" has been a huge hit and was aired throughout the nation for a long time.

Controversy

Lamhaa was banned in Pakistan and some GCC countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Oman. UAE National Media Council Censorship Board felt that the content of the movie is highly objectionable and controversial.

Earlier, the film's screening was cancelled in Kashmir amid the tense atmosphere. The producer didn't want to be insensitive to the sentiments of the Kashmiri people. The producer, Walia commented, "There are no scenes that they want me to remove from the film. They have outrightly refused to screen Lamhaa. [...] This news has really dampened my spirits. The Middle East is a huge market for Bollywood movies these days and we could suffer a huge setback because of this ban. There is definitely a lot of money at stake that could have been recovered from that region, but more than that I am sad that the audience there can't see a film like 'Lamhaa'."

The Indian censor board passed the movie with an A certificate after two edits were made.