Mehak Jamal is a filmmaker and writer from Srinagar, Kashmir. She was a Writing Fellow at the literary mentorship programme, South Asia Speaks in 2022. Under the mentorship of journalist Rahul Bhatia, she developed her book, Loal Kashmir, a work of narrative non-fiction.
Mehak’s short film Bad Egg premiered at the 19th Indian Film Festival Stuttgart 2022 and won the German Star of India-Audience Award. It went on to screen at various festivals all over the world. She has co-written the feature film Love Hostel and is currently writing for Amazon.
Mehak began her career as a script supervisor on several feature films, including The Disciple (2021), The Sweet Requiem (2018) and Chuskit (2018). Mehak holds a Bachelors of Creative Arts in Film from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore (2016).
Mehak’s book Loal Kashmir explores the true stories of how lovers–including couples, best friends, parents and children–managed to find ingenious ways of staying in touch and express their love under different periods of civil unrest in Kashmir, with a focus on the communication blockade imposed after the Abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. Loal Kashmir will be published by HarperCollins in December, 2024.