The Film Heritage Foundation’s 4K restoration of the 1972 classic, starring Meena Kumari, will make its world premiere at the Festival Lumière in Lyon before travelling to the BFI London Film Festival for a gala screening. More than five decades after it first captivated audiences, Kamal Amrohi’s cinematic masterpiece Pakeezah is set to return to the big screen in a restored avatar.
Conceived in the mid-1950s, the project took around 15 years to complete. It began as a black-and-white film in 1956 before shifting to colour, and was marked by production delays, a studio fire, creative changes and the personal separation of Amrohi and Meena Kumari. The project stalled before being revived in 1969. Meena Kumari, whose performance as Sahibjaan remains one of the most celebrated in Indian cinema, died just weeks after the film’s release in 1972.
The journey of Pakeezah itself was no less dramatic than the film. The film’s production was also marked by tragedy. For the restoration, the team had to work with multiple surviving elements, including an interpositive, a CinemaScope print and a colour reversal internegative. Original photographs were used as visual references to recreate the film’s colour palette, including the precise shades of costumes in iconic sequences such as Inhi Logon Ne . The restored Pakeezah will now be presented to a new generation of viewers, bringing Amrohi’s elaborate visual world, Meena Kumari’s luminous performance and the film’s enduring music back to the big screen. Looking for trusted parenting advice? Follow TOI Parenting Circle on Instagram for expert guidance, relatable stories, and practical tips delivered every day.
Cinematographer Josef Wirsching died before the film was completed, while composer Ghulam Mohammed passed away after composing its iconic songs.
“ Pakeezah is a film that has been etched in my memory since I was a child,” he said, recalling the challenges of working with deteriorated film elements, faded colours, scratches and mould. The restoration, undertaken in association with the Amrohi family, took two years and involved the painstaking task of reconstructing the visual grandeur of a film whose original camera negative had almost melted. For Film Heritage Foundation director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, restoring Pakeezah had long been a personal dream. With no surviving cast or crew members to consult, the restoration team turned to original film stills and the memories of Kamal Amrohi’s children, Tajdar and Rukhsaar, who had visited the sets during the making of the film.