The Kerala Story and The Kashmir Files are two films that national award-winning director Vishal Bhardwaj claims he avoided because he wanted to avoid dealing with such delicate issues. Both The Kashmir Files (2022) and The Kerala Story (2023) were enormous box office successes, but they also stirred up political controversy since many in the opposition referred to them as propaganda movies.
I wasn’t aware that I had seen The Kashmir Files or The Kerala Story. I didn’t want the negative things I was hearing about these movies to have an affect on me. They are propaganda flicks, according to my friends and acquaintances. Because it is such a difficult issue for me, I really wanted to remain out of it. If there is so much negativity, I want to stay away from it because I value my tranquility. Therefore, I didn’t want to watch them, the director said PTI in an interview. Haider, in which Shahid Kapoor and Tabu feature, received praise for its depiction of the Kashmir war.
The Kashmir Files focused on the 1990s flight of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley and starred Anupam Kher, Darshan Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty, and Pallavi Joshi in prominent parts. Director Vivek Agnihotri oversaw it. The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen, tells the story of Keralan women who were coerced into becoming Muslims and afterwards recruited by the Islamic State (IS).
Bhardwaj advised his fellow filmmakers to handle “sensitively” tales that are based on terrible events in real life. He went on to say, “I want my community of filmmakers to handle such stories delicately and not use it as propaganda.”
The 58-year-old writer-director said that it is inevitable that the goal of filmmaking in Hindi would change since society is evolving at the same time. “Cinema is a medium that you may utilize as you choose. We should recognize that individuals are changing if people are acknowledging it and observing it. As a civilization, we are evolving, he said.
Bhardwaj cited countless sad lynching cases that have happened in the nation and said that people are no longer as impacted by them as they once were. “Did we ever imagine that we would get used to hearing about lynchings? When it first occurred, we asked, “How can this mobocracy happen? How are some individuals able to murder someone in a group? Where are the police? The law is where? We are used to this now. Currently, it is as though “Lynching has occurred here or there.” Because we accept it, it has no effect on us. We are no longer responding to it,” he stated.