Mehak Jamal is a film maker and writer from Srinagar, Kashmir. She is a Writing Fellow at the literary mentorship programme, South Asia Speaks 2022. Under the mentorship of journalist Rahul Bhatia, she is writing 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 and the Excellence in Cinema Award at the Atlanta Indian Film Festival 2022. She has co-written the feature film Love Hostel. She is currently writing for Disney and Amazon.

Mehak was a screenwriting fellow for Film Independent’s Global Media Maker’s Programme in 2021. Her student short film, In My Own Skin, was showcased at the Kashish-Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in 2017. She has worked 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).

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.