Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’ has received IMDB’s ‘Most Popular Film’ award for the year 2022. The movie has been among IMDB’s list of ’Most Popular Indian Films’ of 2022.
Director Vivek Agnihotri took to Twitter to announce the award received by ‘The Kashmir Files’, a movie that brought to silver screen the horrifying atrocities faced by Kashmiri Pandits in the 90s and their subsequent exodus from the valley.
Happy to receive this priceless award from @IMDb for judging #TheKashmirFiles as the ‘Most Popular Film’ of 2022.
— Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) December 14, 2022
Truly a people’s film. pic.twitter.com/gwt95MRxc8
Actor Anupam Kher, who played a central character in ‘The Kashmir Files’, also took to Twitter to announce that the movie has been among the Top 10 most popular Indian movies of 2022.
Happy to share that as per @IMDb #TheKashmirFiles is among the “Top 10 Most Popular Indian Movies Of 2022’. And the ONLY Hindi one. Congratulations to makers of all the other films on the list! It is a wonderful feeling. And as I always say, “ कुछ भी हो सकता है”।जय हो!🙏😍👏 pic.twitter.com/VMopwgsXJS
— Anupam Kher (@AnupamPKher) December 14, 2022
IMDB, the world’s most popular and authoritative source on movies, OTT shows and series, recently released their list of top 10 Indian movies of 2022. Shockingly, ‘The Kashmir Files’ was the only Hindi movie to be in the top 10.
Unsurprisingly, S S Rajamouli’s period action thriller ‘RRR’, which has received two nominations at the prestigious Golden Globe Award 2023, topped the IMDB list, followed by Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’.
IMDB determines the list of the popular movies and web series by the actual page views of the more than 200 million monthly visitors to the website.
K.G.F: Chapter 2, Vikram, Kantara, Rocketry, Major, Sita Ramam, Ponniyin Selvan: Part One, and 777 Charlie were other movies in the top 10 list.
The list came out weeks after controversy erupted over Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s tendentious and unwarranted remarks on ‘The Kashmir Files’, triggering the left ecosystem into once again attacking the movie that brought to the fore uncomfortable reality of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus.
The Kashmir Files
The film takes 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 is based on video interviews with first-generation Kashmiri Pandit victims of the Kashmir Genocide begins with the episode of the year 1990 when the then CM of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah had tendered his resignation. Abdullah had lost control back in 1984, probably after he had visited a conference in Kashmir and shared the platform with the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front’s (JKLF) leader Yasin Malik. Later Ghulam Mohammad Shah, who was supported by the Congress party had replaced his brother-in-law Farooq Abdullah and assumed the role as the state Chief Minister.