Batt Koch

Batt Koch (2025)

In the heart of a bustling city of Jammu, far from their ancestral homeland, Kashmir, a Kashmiri Pandit family juggles the complexities of modern life while caring for an elderly grandfather who struggles with a memory condition.

Date of release
2025-11-14
Runtime
1h 13m
Genres
Drama
Director
Siddarth Koul, Ankit Wali

Casting

Interesting facts

Batt Koch is a 2025 Indian Kashmiri-language drama film directed by Siddharth Koul and Ankit Wali. The film portrays the everyday life of a displaced Kashmiri Hindu family in Jammu, decades after the 1990s forced displacement of their community from their homeland in the Kashmir Valley due to militant violence, and their eventual visit back to their crumbling abandoned ancestral neighbourhood in Anantnag. Produced by Vinayak Razdan, the film stars M. K. Raina, Anil Koul Chingari, Kusum Tikoo, Sakshi Bhat, Kusum Dhar and Ravin Bhat. It premiered at the International Film Festival in Srinagar in November 2025 and had a theatrical release later in March 2026.

Production

The film is written by Siddharth Koul, who co-directed it with Ankit Wali. The directors were inspired by their own experiences growing up in displaced Kashmiri Hindu households. Koul was also inspired by "the emotional relationship" of Amitabh Bachchan's character with his ancestral home in the 2015 film Piku to "explore a similar emotional truth" in Koul's own language, Kashmiri. It is produced by Vinayak Razdan.

The film was shot entirely in Jammu and Kashmir, on locations in Jammu in the Jammu region, and Anantnag, Pahalgam and Mattan in the Kashmir Valley. The Mattan temple also features in the film. The film's climax was shot in the house of a relative of director Ankit Wali.

Most of the cast and crew of the film consisted Kashmiri Pandits, many of whom were born after the 1990s forced displacement of their community from the Kashmir Valley and were visiting their homeland for the first time while shooting for the film. M. K. Raina, who plays the protagonist and lived through the displacement, has been visiting and working with youth in the region since 2000.

The film's musical score was composed by Saurabh Zadoo. The soundtrack includes two original songs composed for the film, while several old Kashmiri folk songs also feature in the film. Ravi Bhat wrote the lyrics for the original songs.

The film received 'U' certification from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of India on 30 December 2025. While beginning the certification process earlier in October, the film's directors realised that CBFC did not have a separate language category for Kashmiri films, which they decided to challenge.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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