 The irony here is that according to the learned central board of film certification, 16 year olds in the rest of India should not watch what these two 16 year olds are undergoing in Kashmir. My story with CBFC begins in 2010 when I applied for my first film inshallah football which was first banned. Then after I protested they gave it a adult certificate which was totally uncalled for. And after getting the adult certificate then I submitted it for national awards and we won the national award. So next year I made inshallah Kashmir, again that was banned, again I protested, again I got an A certificate which was not warranted and again I got a national award. So this is my third film on Kashmir and it has been banned. They have said they will give it an A certificate but under certain conditions which is not acceptable to me because I think it's totally unwarranted. And this time I have decided that instead of just accepting the A certificate and making the cuts and moving on I have decided that enough is enough. I have to put my foot down, I have to fight this because with an adult certificate what happens is that I cannot sell the movie to broadcaster and everybody understands that a theatrical release is only like a glorified advertising campaign for a film. The real finances of a movie are recovered on broadcast rights and then obviously on the internet. Film to be certified by CBFC on 15th of July and till September they didn't even watch the film once. And then after that in September when they watched the film they didn't give me any conclusion, there was no decision made. Now a process that normally takes between three weeks to say two months has taken over six months in my case. So this is the reason I wrote three letters, two letters actually, two Mr. Prasoon Joshi and one WhatsApp, requesting him to kindly look at the movie himself to see if there was anything objectionable and if so let's have a conversation about it and let's see whether we can resolve the situation in a timely manner. But unfortunately I have now lost six months of time and we have no way to proceed. Now with an adult certificate no broadcaster can take my film as per the law of the land. So I need to have a UA certificate at minimum if not a U certificate. Now the irony here is please understand that my film is a film about two teenagers who fall in love and have their first heartbreak, 16 year olds and the backdrop is Kashmir and obviously Kashmir has its issues and so the film is ostensibly about these two kids. But the irony here is that according to the Learned Central Board of Film Certification, 16 year olds in the rest of India should not watch what these two 16 year olds are undergoing in Kashmir. Which I find remarkable. So I have decided that now I am going to fight this injustice. In fact it's not just injustice it's illegal because there is plenty of precedents such as the movie Haider which was made by Vishal Ji which had a U certificate or UA certificate I can't remember. There is another movie made by one Mr. Pankaj Butalia which was on stone pelting in Kashmir which went to High Court, they won the appeal and the A certificate got turned into a U certificate. So these precedents are there and the CBFC is well aware of these precedents. But yet they have made me wait for six months. Films, cinema is almost a spiritual experience. Both the making of it as well as the viewing of it and the potential that it has to move people emotionally and in fact also create some sort of social change somewhere. I mean just the fact that people start asking some questions for me is the first step towards change and to do so where nobody else is asking those questions. I mean I make the reason I guess one of the reasons why I am drawn to Kashmir is because there is very little that you can actually say about Kashmir without getting censored I guess you know. And that means there is a big problem, there is a big imbalance. There is a lot of propaganda and misinformation and outright lies that are told about what is happening in Kashmir and there is very little counter narrative. It is my responsibility to create cinema that asks those questions, that pushes those dialogues and narratives.