Film Festivals personally for me are the places where I would rather turn off my phone and just enjoy the magic of cinema. But when controversy like what happened at the International Film Festival Of India (IFFI) takes the driving seat, it dissolves the entire purpose of Film Festivals. There, it's mostly about celebrating cinema and not trashing or creating a target controversy around them.
What happened at the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, the jury head, Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid criticising 'The Kashmir Files' at the closing ceremony, is not cool at all. I took some time to arrive at the following thoughts and form my opinion about it, as a festival founder myself, and having the experience of being a member of the jury on various festivals.
So, the way how generally things work is you have a discussion amongst fellow judges during the programming period or at the screenings, where juries have every right to be very critical about the creative aspects of films. As per jury members’ united decisions, a film wins awards, or it doesn't. That’s it. But pinpointing a specific film, that too during the closing ceremony, seems very malicious and strategic to me.
I, very seriously, wanted to understand Lapid’s side as well. I went on YouTube and found an exclusive interview he gave to NDTV Business on November 30, 2022.
In the interview, he says the words he used for ‘The Kashmir Files’ - ‘Vulgar’ and ‘Propaganda’. Whatever he said about the film was within the creative context. At the same, he spoke of ‘Cinematic Manipulation’. It’s the way you choose an image. It’s the way you choose sound. The way scenes are constructed. But my argument is that a serious filmmaker, who's talking about the grammar or aesthetics of any specific film will never use words like ‘Propaganda’ to describe the image or acting or production or sound quality if it's not up to one's level of creative satisfaction. That too, on a closing night ceremony of the film festival.
Lapid said for him ‘The Kashmir Files’ is very basic and cheap cinematic manipulation. That's alright, he is entitled to form his views about a cinema but as a jury, those thoughts should have been reflected and restricted to results only. Or, if there was a cinema studies class going on instead of the closing night ceremony. In my opinion, he should have kept the closing ceremony civil.
Anyhow, putting a film festival together is a hell of a job for any film festival team and creating these targeted controversies may at times put the future of the festival in jeopardy.
(Disclaimer: Tushar Tyagi is an Independent Filmmaker and the Founder of the world-renowned Yellowstone International Film Festival. Views expressed are personal.)
