In response to their views, Sudipto Sen, an Indian filmmaker and fellow juror, said, “It is true that the mentioned picture was rejected on aesthetic grounds, but Lapid’s statement was not artistic.”
Jinko Gotoh, a BAFTA winner who was part of the five-member jury for the International Competition at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), stated today that she and two of her fellow jurors stand by Nadav Lapid’s comments at the closing ceremony about The Kashmir Files (2022) being a “propaganda” film.
Pascale Chavance’s handle tweeted a joint statement signed by jurors Pascale Chavance, Javier Angulo Barturen, and Gotoh. The post expressed their support for Lapid, saying, “We stand with his remarks.”
This revelation comes at a time when many have suspected that Lapid, a politically savvy filmmaker, gave his personal view rather than the jury’s at the IFFI closing ceremony. Earlier, filmmaker Sudipto Sen, the lone Indian on the IFFI International Competition jury, told The Indian Express that Lapid made the comment in his “personal capacity.”. Sen said: “As the jury chairman of the International Competition, Nadav went to speak on the stage of the IFFI’s closing ceremony. The words he made there, however, were made in his own capacity. Whatever we had to say about the films in competition as members of the Jury Board, we said in the official presentation to the festival director and other officials on November 27 and later at a press conference.”
“The Kashmir Files, the 15th film, “felt to us like a vulgar propaganda movie, inappropriate for just an artistic competitive section of this prestigious film festival,” the statement released said today. “We were all disturbed as well as shocked by the film,” it continued. At the festival’s closing ceremony, the jury’s president, Nadav Lapid, addressed on behalf of the jury members.
We abide with his assertion.” Gotoh is an Oscar-nominated American producer, while Barturen is a French documentary filmmaker, cinema critic, and journalist. Chavance, the other jury member, is a French film editor.
“And to clarify, we were not taking a political stance on the film’s content, we were making an artistic statement, and it saddens us greatly to see the festival platform being used for politics and subsequent personal attacks on Nadav,” Gotoh, an Oscar nominated US-based producer, said in a statement posted on his Twitter handle. That was never the jury’s goal.” Sincerely, 53rd IFFI Jurors: Jinko Gotoh, Pascale Chavance, and Javier Angulo Barturen, the statement concludes.
Nadav Lapid’s other foreign jury members back him up, however Sudipto Sen is left out of the formal statement.
