‘The Kashmir Files’ Has “Fascist Features”: Israeli Filmmaker Doubles Down
Nadav Lapid, an Israeli director whose criticism of the movie “The Kashmir Files” at a film festival has caused a stir, has defended them and asserted that “someone has to speak up.”
At the festival’s closing ceremony, Mr. Lapid, the chairman of the foreign jury at the International Film Festival of India in Goa, criticised the Vivek Agnihotri-directed movie as “propaganda and vulgar”. He claimed that after watching the movie, the jury was “disturbed and shocked.” In a competitive, artistic category of such a prominent film festival, it felt to us like a propagandist picture, he continued.
Many accused the acclaimed filmmaker of being insensitive to the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits, who were compelled to evacuate the Valley during the height of militancy in the 1990s, after making the remarks, which resulted in a significant uproar. Numerous others questioned how someone from a community that experienced the atrocities of the Holocaust could say such things.
“It’s crazy, what’s going on here. It’s a government festival and it’s the biggest in India. It’s a film that the Indian government, even if it didn’t actually make it, at least pushed it in an unusual way. It basically justifies the Indian policy in Kashmir, and it has fascist features,” he said, according to a rough translation of the interview in Hebrew.
He said there are claims that the move captured dimensions hidden by intellectuals and the media. “It is always the same method – that there is the foreign enemy, and there are traitors from within.”
The movie, which was promoted by BJP leaders in power, has been financially successful but has also come under fire for allegedly inflaming racial tensions. A number of social media users and public figures claimed Mr. Lapid had “called out propaganda” after his comments.
Israel’s ambassadors in India have also strongly reacted to the filmmaker’s comments, with envoy Naor Gilon declaring that Mr. Lapid “should be ashamed” and demanding an apology.
In his interview, Mr. Lapid stated that he was appalled by the “clear combination between propaganda, fascism, and vulgarity” when seeing the film. He told Ynet, “I couldn’t help but think an Israeli movie like this in another year and a half or two.”
The filmmaker said that if the chairman of a foreign jury spoke critically about a film of his country, he would be “happy” even if it is “not a pleasant feeling”. “In countries that are increasingly losing the ability to speak your mind or speak the truth, someone needs to speak up. When I saw this movie, I couldn’t help but imagine its Israeli equivalent, which doesn’t exist but could definitely exist. So I felt I had to,” he said.
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