‘Line Of Control’ Review: Travis Hodgkins’s Powerful Drama Makes Kashmir’s Grief Personal

 

‘Line Of Control’ Review: Travis Hodgkins’s Powerful Drama Makes Kashmir’s Grief Personal

Rudi Dharmalingam and Nikhil Singh Rai deliver affecting performances in a haunting adaptation of Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator.

With “Line of Control,” director Travis Hodgkins demonstrates how deliberate pacing can deepen suspense rather than diminish it. His adaptation of Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator lets the grief and devastation of Kashmir unfold gradually, giving viewers time to understand the pressures on the characters before the danger tightens around them. Haunting cinematography and powerful performances, particularly those of Rudi Dharmalingam and Nikhil Singh Rai, make that patience richly rewarding.

For viewers unfamiliar with the region, this measured introduction is necessary. Hodgkins establishes the relationships and loyalties that make the violence so devastating, allowing us to recognize what is threatened before the action accelerates. The resulting suspense has an emotional force that makes the film difficult to look away from.

The Boy (Nikhil Singh Rai) holds a handgun in a tense moment from director Travis Hodgkins’s “Line Of Control,” adapted from Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator.

Set in Kashmir in 1993, the story follows a teenager known as the Boy (Nikhil Singh Rai), whose closest friends have disappeared, believed to have crossed the Line of Control into Pakistan. An Indian Army officer, Captain Kadian (Rudi Dharmalingam), forces him to enter a valley strewn with dead fighters to retrieve weapons and identification cards. Each journey brings the terrifying possibility of finding his missing best friend among the bodies.

The work also makes him an outcast in his village, where neighbors begin to see him as a collaborator. Caught between Kadian’s authority and his loyalty to his community, he struggles to learn what happened to his friends while preserving his conscience—and his life. An assignment he cannot freely refuse becomes, in the eyes of those around him, evidence of betrayal.

Asma (Anastasia Jairath) glances back outside a school in a scene from director Travis Hodgkins’s “Line Of Control,” set in Kashmir in 1993.

Rudi Dharmalingam and Nikhil Singh Rai Give the Drama Its Force

Dharmalingam is especially compelling as Kadian, making the captain’s authority a source of sustained unease. His escalating demands narrow the Boy’s choices, and their encounters give the film’s larger conflict an immediate, personal threat. The imbalance between them is disturbing because the consequences fall so heavily on the young man who has the least power to resist.

Rai deserves equal attention for capturing the emotional weight of someone trapped between military forces and separatist groups. He conveys the Boy’s fear for his friends alongside the burden of becoming suspect within his own community. His performance keeps us connected to the young person beneath the accusation of “collaborator,” making the character’s predicament painfully believable.

Hodgkins gives these performances time to register. The Boy’s uncertainty is not an interruption of the suspense; it is its source. Once we understand what each journey into the valley might mean to him, the assignment becomes unbearable in ways that action alone could not convey.

Haunting Cinematography and Intelligent Pacing

Johan Holmqvist’s cinematography gives the film a haunting visual presence, with trauma seeming to ripple through every carefully constructed frame. The landscape’s devastation and the characters’ distress remain closely connected, while the performances ensure that the imagery never becomes an occasion for detached admiration.

The contrast between the deliberate passages and the faster-paced action is particularly effective. Hodgkins allows apprehension to accumulate, then carries that emotional weight into the film’s more urgent stretches. We are not simply waiting to see what happens next; we are afraid of what the next discovery will do to the Boy.

That approach asks audiences to open themselves to the grief of the Kashmir Valley without pretending that one story can explain the conflict in full. “Line Of Control” does not attempt to offer a definitive answer to a complicated problem. Its strength lies in showing how coercion reaches into friendship, community and conscience, leaving a young man to bear consequences he did not choose.

Hodgkins’s intelligent pacing makes that experience absorbing, while Dharmalingam and Rai give it a lasting emotional impact. The suspense holds our attention, but the Boy’s impossible position is what makes the film hurt.

“Haunting and deeply affecting. Travis Hodgkins builds gripping suspense, with powerful performances by Rudi Dharmalingam and Nikhil Singh Rai.”— Lapacazo Sandoval, AmNews Curtain Raiser

Film Credits

“Line Of Control”

Genre: Drama

Running time: 117 minutes

Director: Travis Hodgkins

Producer: Rashaana Shah

Based on: The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed

Cast: Rudi Dharmalingam, Nitin Ganatra, Nikhil Singh Rai, Vikram Kapadia, Meera Ganatra and Anastasia Jairath

Cinematographer: Johan Holmqvist

Awards and Festival Screenings

Award Winners

UK Asian Film Festival — Winner, Flame Award for Best Cinematography

Culver City Film Festival — Winner, Best Cinematography, Feature Film

Finalists

Antakya International Film Festival, Turkey — Finalist, Best Feature Film

Nepal Cultural International Film Festival — Finalist

Premieres and Market Screening

San Diego International Film Festival — World Premiere

Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai — Asia Premiere

Cannes Marché du Film — Market Screening

Official Selections

Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Salerno, Italy

Dances With Films: New York

Karama Human Rights Film Festival, Jordan

Boston Film Festival

Tamuz Shomron Film Festival

Sofia MENAR Film Festival, Bulgaria

Joburg Film Festival, South Africa

Anchorage International Film Festival

Buffalo International Film Festival