The Kashmir Files featuring Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty and Darshan Kumar released in 2022 and turned out to be a massive blockbuster at the box office. However, the film garnered polarising views across the audience. While some lauded it for speaking the hidden truth about Kashmiri Pandits, some called it propaganda and Islamophobic product.
Now, the National Award-winning filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia, who directed Irrfan Khan’s Paan Singh Tomar and featured in films like Gangs Of Wasseypur, Zero, Hero, Shahid, Milan Talkies and others, has slammed the Vivek Agnihotri directorial and called it ‘bekaar’.
“Uss tarha ki filmein? Woh toh bekaar picture hoti hain, kaun dekhta hai unhe, chalti bhi nahi hain (Those films are terrible. Who even watches them)? Sirf wahi chali thi, kya naam tha uska, Kashmir Files. Main inki baat hi nahi karta, bekaar picturein hain sab (I don’t even talk about these films, they’re all terrible),” said Dhulia while talking Red Mike YouTube channel.
“We see directors using their political ideologies as propaganda in their cinema. This is a wide-ranging topic. In India, the sort of films that are being made to promote the kind of politics that we see around us, are aesthetically terrible. Bekaar hain, dekhne mein pata chalta hai. They’re badly made films, first of all. Ideologies aside,” he added.
“But Indian propaganda films aren’t as well made, because they’re made with the wrong intentions. Paisa kamana hai yaar (They all want to make money),” concluded the filmmaker.
Talking about _The Kashmir Files_, it also featured Pallavi Joshi, Chinmay Mandlekar, Mrinal Kulkarni and others in prominent roles. It raked in over Rs 250 crore at the box office and emerged as one of the profitable films in the history of Indian cinema.