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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteFor filmmaker and writer Saeed Mirza, Naseem is both his most personal film and “an epitaph for the idea of India.” In a December 2025 interview with Scroll, he recalled making the 1996 film as an intimate response to the political violence and rising tensions surrounding the Babri Masjid demolition—not as a grand historical epic.
Why Mirza calls Naseem his most personal film
Naseem was made in 1996 but is set in 1992. The film follows the build-up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid through a private, closed-circuit story. Mirza told Scroll that he wrote it over a couple of years, out of anger, and described it as his most personal work: “Naseem is an epitaph for the idea of India.” Read the interview.
Mirza said he was in Bombay when the mosque was demolished and had seen tensions building; he recalled witnessing “slaughter and mayhem.” He also said his wife, Jennifer, and their children were in Delhi during the anti-Sikh riots. These are Mirza’s recollections as recounted in the interview, rather than an independent history of either episode.
What Mirza believes cinema should do
Mirza’s account of Naseem connects to a larger argument about form and audience. He says dramatic narrative can engage viewers, but can also be undemocratic when it makes plot and actors more important than the ideas a film might explore. As he put it, “Cinema has to be democratic” and “My films are fundamentally essays.” Those are his views on filmmaking, not universal definitions of what cinema must be.
His early encounters with film helped shape that outlook. Mirza recalls seeing projected films at home, including 16mm prints, and being struck by Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. He says Potemkin introduced him to a cinema of ideas, structure, form, and discipline. His father, Akhtar Mirza, also told him that entertainment was only one kind of cinema.
From advertising to the Film and Television Institute of India
Mirza says he began by making commercials before joining the direction course at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune in the 1970s. He recalled classmates including K. Hariharan, Ashok Ahuja, Subhankar Ghosh, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and Ravi Ojha. Ritwik Ghatak taught in his batch; Mirza says Ghatak gave students something no teacher could.
One memorable piece of advice attributed to Ghatak reaches Mirza through another filmmaker: he recalls Kundan Shah relaying Ghatak’s line to “keep your childhood in one pocket and a bottle of whiskey in the other.” The interview presents this as an anecdote, not as a separately verified quotation.
The films Mirza looks back on
Mirza’s work from the 1970s through the 1990s includes Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, Mohan Joshi Haazir Ho!, and Naseem. The interview also notes that Ek Tho Chance, made in 2009, was not released.
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Asked which of his own films he likes most, Mirza called Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan the most tolerable. He was more critical of his work on Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro. His answers offer a candid view of how he assesses his own filmography, rather than a ranking of the films’ broader critical standing.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Akhtar Mirza, literature, and Saeed Mirza’s books
Akhtar Mirza, Saeed’s father, was a screenwriter associated with Naya Daur (1957), Waqt (1960), and Dhund (1973). Saeed recalled him as erudite and as the person who introduced him to Spanish and Russian literature. He also described his father’s complicated attitude toward Marxists and leftists: critical of dogmatism, but respectful of people on the left.
Mirza’s literary work includes Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, I Know the Psychology of Rats, and Memory in the Age of Amnesia, all named in the interview. The conversation confirms the titles, but does not establish editions or current availability.
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