An Israeli director sparks outrage in India over a film about Hindu persecution

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/30/ [login to see] /an-israeli-director-sparks-outrage-in-india-over-a-film-about-hindu-persecution
Scandal has engulfed one of India's most prestigious film festivals over a Bollywood box office hit, an Israeli director's take on it — and accusations of pro- and anti-Hindu bias that are shaking Indian-Israeli relations.

It's all unfolded at the International Film Festival of India, held over the past week in the western Indian state of Goa. At the closing ceremony Monday, the head of the festival's jury, Israeli director Nadav Lapid, praised 14 of the 15 films screened in the festival's international competition. He said they all have "cinematic richness, diversity and complexity."

But he singled out the 15th film for a starkly different assessment.

"We were, all of us [jurors], disturbed and shocked ... by the movie Kashmir Files," Lapid, an award-winning filmmaker, said onstage. "It felt to us like a propaganda vulgar movie, inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious film festival."