‘The Kashmir Files’ director Vivek Agnihotri and producer Pallavi Joshi recently opened up that a fatwa was issued against them on the last day of the film's shoot.
Director Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’, starring actors Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumar, and the director’s wife and producer Pallav Joshi who also plays a character in the movie, was released on March 11. It got a great response at the box-office. The movie received positive reviews and even word-of-mouth has been quite good.
Recently, in an interview, Joshi opened up about the biggest challenge that they faced during the shooting of the film. The actress revealed that they received a Fatwa issued on their names. For the unversed, a fatwa is a legal opinion on a matter of Islamic law, practice or convention. Fatwa became a much-discussed word in 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued it to kill novelist Salman Rushdie for his Satanic verses, which allegedly insulted the Prophet.
While talking to News18, the actress stated, “The shooting was the smallest part of our entire journey. The whole research, reaching out to people, getting money for the film, getting actors on board, everything was a massive challenge."
“The filming was the easiest part and probably the smallest part of it. In the four years that we dedicated to this film, shooting took only a month. The only thing that happened was when we were shooting in Kashmir, we received a Fatwah issued on our names. When that happened, we were fortunately on our last scene. I told Vivek, ‘Let’s finish this scene quickly and head to the airport.’ We were anyway leaving, but I told him, ‘Let’s not say anything and finish the shoot right now.’ Because we wouldn’t get another chance to come back. So we finished that scene and I sent a few people to the hotel and said, ‘You guys start packing and put everything in the bag and get it to the sets and we’ll leave from there.’ That was the only challenge we faced while shooting,” she added.
‘The Kashmir Files’ is about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits that took place in the 1990s. A lot of people are getting emotional after watching the movie and that seems to be the biggest achievement of the makers of the film.