Embarrassment for govt: Congress on Israeli filmmaker's criticism of 'The Kashmir Files'

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The Congress on Tuesday attacked the government over Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid's criticism of 'The Kashmir Files' at IFFI, calling it an "embarrassment" and saying that hate eventually gets called out.

The attack by the Opposition party leaders came after Lapid, the jury head of the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI), on Monday described the Hindi film as "propaganda" and "vulgar".

"PM Modi, his govt, BJP, the RW ecosystem feverishly promoted 'The Kashmir Files' A movie rejected by International Film Festival Of India. Jury Head Nadav Lapid called it 'propaganda, vulgar movie – inappropriate for the film festival'," Congress spokesperson and head of the party's social media department Supriya Srinate said.

"Hate gets called out, eventually," Srinate said in a tweet late Monday night.

In a tweet on Tuesday, another Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed said, "International Film Festival Of India Jury President Nadav Lapid calls 'The Kashmir Files' vulgar propaganda. In a bid to polarise the people of India, the BJP govt went all out in promoting the movie, resulting in a huge embarrassment for India on the international scale!"

In his speech at the closing ceremony of IFFI 2022, Lapid said he was "disturbed and shocked" to see the film being screened at the film festival.  "All of us were disturbed and shocked by the movie 'The Kashmir Files'. It felt to us like a propaganda and vulgar movie that was inappropriate for an artistic and competitive section of such a prestigious film festival.

"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", Lapid said.

After Lapid criticised the film, the country's envoy to India Naor Gilon slammed him, saying he should be "ashamed" as he had "abused in the worst way" the Indian invitation to him to chair the panel of judges at the film festival.

'The Kashmir Files', which was released in theatres on March 11, was part of the Indian Panorama Section at IFFI and was screened on November 22.