Refusing to backtrack his stinging criticism of the Bollywood movie The Kashmir Files, Israeli film director Nadav Lapid, who called the movie a "propaganda movie" and "vulgar", said, "someone has to speak up."
The director had earlier said he was disturbed and shocked at The Kashmir Files being chosen for the Indian Panorama section of the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI), for which he was the jury head.
Following the controversy surrounding his criticism of the movie, Lapid told an Israeli news website over the phone that the Indian government pushed the movie in an "unusual way."
"It is crazy, what's going on here. It is a government festival and it is the biggest in India. It is a film that the Indian government, even if it didn't actually make it, at least pushed it in an unusual way," he said.
He claimed that the movie justifies the Indian policy in Kashmir, and has fascist features.
The director said while watching The Kashmir Files at the festival, he was shocked by the "combination between propaganda and fascism and vulgarity." Lapid, in his interview, which has been translated from Hebrew, said, "The claim is there that the dimensions of the event are hidden by intellectuals and media. It is always the same... there is a foreign enemy and there are traitors from within."
When the director was asked if he had expected the massive backlash his remarks eventually attracted, he said he was apprehensive. "It wasn't an easy position "I am the president of the jury here, you are treated very nicely. And then you come and attack the festival. There was apprehension, and there was discomfort."
After Lapid's criticism of the movie created a controversy, Gilon, Israel's ambassador to India, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, Naor Gilon, offered an apology on Twitter saying, "As a human being I feel ashamed and want to apologise to our hosts for the bad manner in which we repaid them for their generosity and friendship."
"I'm no film expert but I do know that it's insensitive and presumptuous to speak about historic events before deeply studying them and which are an open wound in India because many of the involved are still around and still paying a price," the ambassador said in a thread addressed to the Israeli director.
