Nadav Lapid has stated he did not imply to disclaim Kashmiri Pandits’ tragedy; solely commented on film. (File)

New Delhi:

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, whose feedback terming ‘The Kashmir Files’ as “vulgar” and “propaganda” led to a row, has now bought help from three others jury members of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa. An announcement posted on Twitter by jury member Jinko Gotoh, together with Pascale Chavance and Javier Angulo Barturen as undersigned, stated your entire jury knew — and agreed with — what Mr Lapid stated as jury chief.

This leaves solely Sudipto Sen — the lone Indian filmmaker on the IFFI International Competition jury — claiming that Mr Lapid made the assertion “in his personal capacity”.

Mr Lapid has since stated he didn’t imply to disclaim the tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits, however had solely commented on the film’s “cinematic manipulations”, and that the tragedy “deserves a serious movie”.

This was underlined by the three fellow jurors of their joint assertion.

“At the festival’s closing ceremony, Nadav Lapid, the jury’s president, made a statement on behalf of the jury members stating: ‘We were all of disturbed and shocked by the 15th film, The Kashmir Files, that felt to us like a vulgar propaganda movie, inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious film festival.’ We stand by his statement,” it learn.  

“And to clarify, we were not taking a political stance on the film’s content, we were making an artistic statement, and it saddens us greatly to see the festival platform being used for politics and subsequent personal attacks on Nadav. That was never the intention of the jury,” it added.

Jinko Gotoh is an Oscar-nominated American producer; Javier A Barturen, a documentary filmmaker and journalist from France; and Pascale Chavance is a movie editor from France.

Vivek Agnihotri, director of the movie that has made box-office data since its launch in March, has alleged that Mr Lapid denied the tragedy of Pandits, who needed to go away Kashmir as a consequence of terrorism within the Nineteen Nineties. Anupam Kher, the lead actor, alleged a conspiracy.

The Israeli ambassador to India — who faced anti-semitic comments such as “Hitler was great” from a few of these protesting Mr Lapid’s feedback — additionally stated he felt “ashamed” at Mr Lapid’s assertion and “insult of the host country”. 

Mr Lapid in flip referred to as the envoy a “manipulator”, and stated he and the movie’s director had been conflating two totally different points. “I never doubted the facts, I don’t have the capacity, the tools, to say what happened in Kashmir… I was talking about the movie, and such a serious topic, in my opinion, deserves a serious movie,” Mr Lapid informed a number of information shops.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)