If the juror of a film festival is being called out for being 'out of line' when commenting on the political aspect of a film that is deeply political and politicised in India, should Indian politicians also be called out for their lopsided defence of a Bollywood film?
A renowned Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, the jury head of the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI), on Monday described the controversial Bollywood film 'The Kashmir Files' as "propaganda" and "vulgar". The comments have led to a row in India where it has snowballed into a diplomatic issue.
On Tuesday, Israel's ambassador to India, Naor Gilon, publicly denounced the filmmaker's comments in an "open letter" he wrote addressing Lapid, imploring the latter to be "ashamed" of his comments.
"It's not in Hebrew because I wanted our Indian brothers and sisters to be able to understand," Gilon tweeted, adding in the letter that Lapid had abused the Indian invitation to the judges' panel in the "worst way".
Lapid, who is heading the festival jury, slammed the movie at the closing ceremony of the festival on Monday evening in Goa. He stated that the jurors at KFFI were "disturbed and shocked" by 'The Kashmir Files', which has been in controversy ever since its release in March.
"That felt to us like a propaganda, vulgar movie, inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious film festival," he said. Facing massive backlash over the critique, the jury has distanced itself from his remarks, calling them his "personal opinion".
BJP's Amit Malviya on Tuesday compared Israeli filmmaker Lapid's condemnation of 'The Kashmir Files' to the denial of the Holocaust, the killing of millions of Jews by Hitler's regime. The party's IT department head said, "For the longest time, people even denied the Holocaust and called Schindler's List propaganda, just like some are doing to Kashmir Files. Truth eventually triumphs, no matter what." BJP Goa's spokesperson Savio Rodriguez also slammed Lapid's comments as an insult to the "horrors faced by Kashmiri Hindus", he tweeted.
Others such as the film's director Vivek Agnihotri and actor Anupam Kher who starred in it have also expressed disgruntled reactions.
The issue has led many to question if Lapid, as head of a film festival jury, had the right to make a political comment. Defending his stance at the festival itself, Lapid had said, "I feel comfortable to openly share this feeling with you since the spirit of the festival can truly accept critical discussion which is essential for art and life".
If Lapid, as a juror of a film festival, is being called out for being "out of line" when commenting on the political aspect of a film that is deeply political and politicised in India, should the politicians and Bollywood celebrities also be called out on their stern reactions to Lapid's comment about a Bollywood film? After all, thousands of films are produced by Bollywood around the year.
After the release of 'The Kashmir Files', BJP ministers went in hordes to watch the film in multiplexes and were profusely moved by the film. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the film and told BJP leaders that they should watch it.
The last time those in the government were so excited about a film was in 2019 when 'Uri: The Surgical Strike' released, propelling actor Vicky Kaushal to India's national poster boy status and a special favourite among BJP leaders and ex-military men.
Perhaps Lapid was out of line in making a political statement at a film festival hosted in India that he knew had the potential to blow up. many Kashmiri Pandits in India who lived through the turbulent times that the film painfully dredges up have defended the film as an honest reminder of the tragedy.
Author and feminist podcaster Jessa Crispin had written in a 2019 editorial for The Guardian that "if you insist that a movie is important, you don’t really have to deal with whether or not it’s good. You can shame people into seeing it as a political statement, rather than as an entertainment or cultural selection".
This applies to both Lapid and the BJP leaders like Amit Malviya. While one may be seen as trying to browbeat the film as dangerous propaganda, the other is trying to browbeat audiences into sympathising with it, despite a barrage of criticism against the film's alleged inaccuracy and voyeuristic depictions of violent trauma.
To be fair, Lapid must have known what he was doing. A long-time critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Lapid is not a stranger to mixing art with politics. He knew his comments on The Kashmir Files at the IFFI, the official film festival of the Government of India, in the presence of senior ministers, would create a political backlash.
But why is Lapid the only one on the dock? If criticism from a filmmaker about a film is "political", hyperbolic praise or defence of the same film from politicians or governments is also political.
German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl known for producing some of the most prolific pieces of Nazi propaganda in the history of cinema had once said that she did not make political films. Speaking about the 1935 magnum opus 'Triumph of Will' which is often treated as a "masterpiece" in propaganda filmmaking by researchers of film studies, Riefenstahl had always maintained that she just intended it to be an honest documentary of the Nuremberg rally. In her 1975 essay, film critic and artist Susan Sontag called Triumph of Will a film whose "very conception negates the possibility of the filmmaker's having an aesthetic conception independent of propaganda". She also wrote in detail about the separation of artist from political context.
But there is a third stand. In a paper titled, Film Propaganda: Triumph of the Will as a Case Study, Alan Sennett noted that Sontag, despite her criticism, gave Reifenstahl credit for making politically and culturally potent films, media scientist Brian Winston has opined that a film like the 'Triumph of Will' can be seen as an antithesis to persuasive propaganda and rather as a powerful warning against the very ideas it represents. Winston also stressed that the film did not stand as strong work of art on its own and that it was far from the "masterpiece" that even its most violent critics have dubbed it to be. It was simply a bad film.
If Riefenstahl was making films in the post-truth era of the digital age when "truth" has lost much of its semantic difference from its antonyms, she would be confused too about what is propaganda and what isn't. At a time when facts seemed to have been robbed of their former eminence, drowned out by conspiracy theories masquerading as “alternative facts”, everything is propaganda.
While Lapid and the BJP are locked in the battle for proving if 'The Kashmir Files' is propaganda or not, perhaps audiences can focus on the film itself and its own merits as an artistic and aesthetic expression of socio-political facts. Moreover, in a post-truth world, perhaps the true merit of a film like 'The Kashmir Files' is not judged by what critics or politicians say about it but instead by what it reveals about the critics and politicians.