The Kashmir Files is a “propaganda, vulgar movie”: IFFI jury head
Israeli film-maker Nadav Lapid, head of the jury at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), at the festival’s closing ceremony yesterday, called the film, The Kashmir Files a “propaganda, vulgar movie – inappropriate for the film festival”.
The comment has roused up a huge political storm, with the film’s director Vivek Agnihotri, a poster boy of the right-wing ecosystem in the country, including the BJP, even saying that he would stop making films if what he showed in the film was proved to be untrue.
Predictably, the BJP and its supporters, who had feverishly promoted the film—which is based on the exodus of Kashmiri pandits from the Kashmir Valley following terrorist violence (including killings, kidnappings and rapes) in the late 1980s and early 90s—have jumped to the film’s defence and strongly criticised Lapid for his comment.
However, what many of those criticising Lapid seem to have failed to understand is what the prominent Shiv Sena MP and spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi pointed out in a tweet: that at no point did the Israeli film-maker deny or dismiss the Kashmiri pandit exodus but said that the film has treated “the unfortunate events” as a “propaganda film”.
Several opposition politicians have spoken on similar lines: that the BJP has for long simply milked the grief and misfortune of the Kashmiri pandits, something many have called out again and again, but has now been caught out at none other a place than the prestigious International Film Festival of India, one of India’s biggest international cultural platforms.
