Filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray has now backed Anurag Kashyap’s comments that he hopes India does not select ‘The Kashmir Files’ as its official entry to the Academy Awards this year.
Gray, who helmed Netflix’s non-fiction original film ‘The King of Good Times’ as part of ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’, has also now said that of the Vivek Agnihotri directorial is “selected” by a “neutral” board, it will be an embarrassment to the country. Gray further stated that Anurag is just trying to “preserve” India’s good name.
He tweeted, “Yeah, actually it’s (hate mongering, revisionist) garbage of no artistic merit and will be a further embarrassment to India if ‘selected’ by the ‘neutral’ board… @anuragkashyap72 is just trying to preserve what’s left of the country’s good name #yourewelcome #KashmirFiles”
For those caught unaware, it all started when Anurag gave his opinion on ‘The Kashmir Files’, while predicting that SS Rajamouli’s ‘RRR’ can bag an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, provided it is selected as India’s official entry.
Dylan, however, also slammed the Rajamouli film by tweeting, “RRR is also vile and sadistic, so not much of a step up”.
Meanwhile, Vivek Agnihotri had earlier reacted to Anurag’s statement and said Bollywood has started a campaign against ‘The Kashmir Files’. "Important: The vicious, genocide-denier lobby of Bollywood has started their campaign against The Kashmir Files for Oscars, under the leadership of the maker of Dobaaraa (Anurag) (sic)," he wrote on Twitter.
‘The Kashmir Files’ featured Anupam Kher, Darshan Kumaar, Pallavi Joshi and Mithun Chakraborty, and is still one of the highest grossing films of 2022. It is based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the late-1980s.
RRR, on the other hand, featured Ram Charan and Jr NTR in the lead roles. The period action drama proved successful across the globe since its digital release on Netflix.
