Vivek Agnihotri and Pallavi Joshi on the need for releasing The Kashmir Files Unreported

Director Vivek Agnihotri recently announced The Kashmir Files Unreported, a seven-part docu-series which aims to showcase the research gone into making The Kashmir Files (2022). The documentary will feature testimonies from Kashmiri Pandits and their families who underwent atrocities during the time of their exodus from the Valley in the 1990s.

Speaking on why it was needed to come up with a documentary, Vivek said, “The Kashmir Files was a feature film, and somewhere there is a distance between truth and the way you portray it. Also, everybody was pressuring us to show them the research that has gone behind the film, so I think with the documentary series, The Kashmir Files will also find a new perspective and a new interpretation.”

Defending The Kashmir Files against critics who labelled it “polarising”, the series co-producer and actor Pallavi Joshi said that those who stated that The Kashmir Files was “untrue” and a “piece of fiction”, the documentary will make them “eat their own words.” “Here, the truth is presented in its open, naked form, coming straight from the horse's mouth. It is not manipulated; it is not fiction, and it is not enacted by actors. It is coming directly from the people who have suffered,” she said.

Vivek has stated in the past that The Kashmir Files was based on the testimonies of over 700 Kashmiri Pandits. At the International Film Festival of India last year, Israeli director Nadav Lapid took to stage to call the film “a vulgar propaganda” and also subsequently stated that he is not commenting on the tragedy of the Kashmiri people but is merely calling the film a work of “cinematic manipulation.”

The Kashmir Files Unreported will be released on ZEE5 on August 11.