On Thursday, the 67th event of the Filmfare Awards was organized at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai where many Bollywood celebrities including Ranveer Singh, Kiara Advani, Disha Patani, Vicky Kaushal, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, etc were invited. The evening was star-studded but unfortunately, not a single person from the team of the movie ‘the Kashmir Files’ was invited to the event.
The matter was flagged by a Twitter user named Rajeev Singh Rathore who happens to be associated with the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), Madhya Pradesh. He said that the Filmfare event organizers had failed to invite persons associated with the biggest blockbuster of the year 2022 named ‘the Kashmir Files’. He also suggested that it was high time for people to boycott Bollywood completely.
So Filmfare didn’t invite a single person associated with the movie ‘The kashmir Files’ and nobody from Bollywood objected against it shows why Bollywood need permanent boycott & not just few films. If you can’t respect our sentiments, you don’t deserve our money & appreciation.
— Rajeev Singh Rathore🇮🇳 (@rajeevMP_) September 1, 2022
“So Filmfare didn’t invite a single person associated with the movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ and nobody from Bollywood objected against it shows why Bollywood needs a permanent boycott and not just a few films. If you can’t respect our sentiments, you don’t deserve our money and appreciation”, he tweeted.
The incident was further confirmed to OpIndia by ‘The Kashmir Files’ director Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri. “This is 100% true. The organizers used to call me and my wife till the year 2014, but after that, they stopped and I am very happy about it”, Agnihotri said. Further, he stated that he had lost interest in the Bollywood Award nights and that would not go even if invited. “It is time that people take a stand so everyone knows who stands with India and who does not. Now if Pakistan calls me, will I go?”, the director added.
Earlier, Agnihotri had also slammed a certain section of media houses who tried to downplay the movie by claiming that it had failed to grab National Awards, despite being a super-hit at the box office. “A lot of reputed media houses are running a vicious ‘Hit Job’ against #TheKashmirFiles. And no one is fact-checking them. If they do this to ‘terrorist-friendly’ Bollywood films, the ecosystem would instantly call it Islamophobia. I leave it here for your conscience to decide”, he had said.
As reported earlier, the 68th National Awards were decided by a 10-member jury, led by director Vipul Shah. Given that only films made in 2020 were honoured, it was obvious that ‘The Kashmir Files’ released this year did not feature in any of the categories.
The film ‘The Kashmir Files’ takes the viewers back to 1989, when due to rising Islamic Jihad, a huge conflict erupted in Kashmir, forcing the great majority of Hindus to flee the valley. According to estimates, roughly 100,000 of the valley’s total 140,000 Kashmiri Pandit inhabitants migrated between February and March 1990. More of them fled in the years that followed until just about 3,000 families remained in the valley by 2011.
The movie which was released on March 11, this year proved to be the biggest hit of the decade. Though the film was praised all over the world, a section of Indian opposition parties and leftists tried to run down the film or discredit the story shown within. While some directly called the film a pack of lies, others tried to target the BJP over the issue. Multiple theories were also peddled to discredit the film and its makers, but the public verdict muted all the criticism.
The Kashmir Files starring Darshan Pathak, Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, and Pallavi Joshi in their lead roles earned around Rs 337.23 crore, making it the only Hindi film to cross the Rs 300 crore club during the pandemic as well.
