As India’s official entry for the Oscars 2022 debate gets heated up, the top two contenders emerge as Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’ and S.S. Rajamouli’s ‘RRR’.
Critically acclaimed filmmaker Anurag Kashyap recently reacted to this saying that he doesn’t know what film anybody is going to pick, but he hopes it’s not ‘The Kashmir Files’. And he further went on to endorse ‘RRR’ for the esteemed award.
Canadian filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray called ‘The Kashmir Files’ a “hate mongering, revisionist garbage of no artistic merit”. He also mentioned that the Black Friday director was “just trying to preserve the good name of the country.”
Agnihotri shared a screenshot of a news portal quoting Kashyap and tweeted, “Important: The vicious, genocide-denier lobby of Bollywood has started their campaign against #TheKashmirFiles for #Oscars, under the leadership of the maker of #Dobaaraa.”
In the now-deleted tweet, Dylan wrote, “Yeah, actually it’s (hatemongering, revisionist) garbage of no artistic merit and will be a further embarrassment to India if ‘selected’ by the ‘neutral’ board… Anurag Kashyap is just trying to preserve what’s left of the country’s good name.”
Kashyap told Galatta Plus: “I am speaking from what people have been reaching out to me and talking about in the West. They have discovered a new filmmaker called Rajamouli with RRR. How Everything Everywhere All At Once worked for me, RRR has worked for them. And they find it better than any other Marvel movie. Even the silliness of it and they’re so blown away by the action sequences.”
However, Dylan also shared his opinion on Rajamouli’s film and said in the now-deleted tweet, “RRR is also vile and sadistic, so not much of a step up”.
The Kashmir Files starred Anupam Kher, Pallavi Joshi, Mithun Chakraborty and Darshan Kumar in lead roles. The film was one of the top grossers at the box office this year. The film came under severe criticism for what many referred to as misrepresentation of facts of the migration of Kashmiri Pandits.
