Will give up filmmaking if…: Kashmir Files director Vivek Agnihotri

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ The Kashmir Files director Vivek Agnihotri on Tuesday said he will quit filmmaking if intellectuals, including Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, are able to prove that events depicted in his film are false. A day after Lapid, who served as the chairperson of IFFI’s international jury termed The Kashmir Files “vulgar and propaganda”, Agnihotri challenged his detractors saying he will “keep fighting”.

“I challenge the world’s intellectuals and ‘urban Naxals’ as well as the great filmmaker who came from Israel, if they can prove that any shot, dialogue or event of The Kashmir Files is not absolute truth, I’ll stop making films. I’m not someone who will back down. Issue as many fatwas as you want, but I’ll keep fighting,” the Indian filmmaker said in a video statement shared on his official Twitter page.

Comments made by Lapid, viewed as an anti-establishment voice, came at the closing ceremony of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa on Monday. On Tuesday morning, Agnihotri in a cryptic social media post had said “truth is the most dangerous thing” as it can make people lie. In his video, posted in the evening, the filmmaker said being attacked by “gangs” that want to divide India was not a new phenomenon for him. “Such things are often said by terrorist organisations, urban naxals and the ‘tukde-tukde’ gang who wants to divide the country.