Israel’s Ambassador to India Naor Gillon apologizes for ‘The Kashmir Files’

New Delhi: A day after Israeli filmmaker and jury head of the International Film Festival of India Nadav Lapid called ‘The Kashmir Files’ an ‘obscene and propaganda film’, Israel’s Ambassador to India Naor Gillon has apologized. He tweeted, ‘India and Israel, the friendship between the two countries and the people here is very strong. The damage you (Nadav Lapid) has done will be fixed. I feel ashamed as a human being and want to apologize to our hosts for the bad manner in which we have reciprocated their generosity and friendship.’ Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur told Israel’s Ambassador to India Retweeted Gillon’s tweet supporting his statement. Let us tell you that the International Film Festival of India is organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Jury head Nadav Lapid expressed surprise at the screening of ‘The Kashmir Files’ at the 53rd International Film Festival of India held in Goa. He said that seeing this film, it seemed that it was made only for publicity and is vulgar. Such films do not befit a prestigious film festival and artistic, competitive class. Union Minister Anurag Thakur was standing next to him on the stage when Nadav Lapid made this comment about TKF. Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri is the director of this film. He says that through ‘The Kashmir Files’ he has narrated to the world the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, who had to be displaced from their own state 3 decades ago and had to live as refugees in their own country. It is known that this film also made a record performance at the box office. About 17 crores were spent in making the film and it collected around 400 crores worldwide.