Following the comments about The Kashmir Files film by the controversial Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, the film’s director Vivek Agnihotri had thrown a challenge to the IFFI jury head. Agnihotri had said that he would leave filmmaking if Lapid can highlight any instance in his film that is not true.
Responding to Vivek Agnihotri’s challenge over his remarks calling the film ‘vulgar’ and ‘propaganda’, Lapid said, “I’m sure that the director is furious. I would be furious too if someone would talk about my film the same way. The filmmaker knows very well that the question is not what exactly were the facts. None of us (in the jury), especially myself, ever doubted the facts. I don’t have any capacity, the tools to say what happened in Kashmir.”
However, despite saying that he doesn’t know anything about the facts of Kashmir, and that the film may have presented the facts correctly, Lapid went on to say that he still considers the film to be vulgar propaganda and he will repeat the same comments again and again.
“Whatever I said and I said clearly that for me and my fellow jury members, it was and it is a vulgar propaganda movie that didn’t have a place and was inappropriate for such a prestigious competitive section. I can repeat it again and again”, the controversial filmmaker from Israel said.
Going further to call The Kashmir Files a bad film as well, Lapid said, “Making bad films is not a crime, but this is a very crude, manipulative, and violent propaganda film. The truth is that I also couldn’t help but imagine a similar situation that might happen one day soon in Israel, and I would be happy that in such a situation, the head of a foreign jury would be willing to say things as he sees them.”
Trying to temper his stinging remarks criticising The Kashmir Files, Nadav Lapid issued a cursory apology to the victims of the genocide in Kashmir. Lapid said that he doesn’t want to hurt the sufferers of the violence and their relatives, even as he goes on to call the film about their genocide part of vulgar propaganda.
Meanwhile, Sudipto Sen, one of the members of the IFFI jury issued a statement saying that the remarks expressed by Lapid were his personal opinion, and not of the jury. “In the official presentation of the Jury Board to the Festival Director and in the official Press Conference, where we 4 jurors (the fifth juror had to leave for her emergency) were present and interacted with the press, we never mentioned anything about our likes or dislikes. We don’t indulge in any kind of political comments on any film and if it is done, it is completely in a personal capacity – nothing to do with the esteemed Jury Board,” he said.
The film ‘The Kashmir Files’ takes the viewers back to 1989, when due to rising Islamic Jihad, a large number of Kashmiri Hindus were forced 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 released on March 11 this year, proved to be one of the biggest hits of the year. 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 the lead roles earned around Rs 337.23 crore, making it the first Hindi film to cross the Rs 300 crore club during the coronavirus pandemic.
