Vivek Agnihotri lashes out at filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray for calling The Kashmir Files 'hatemongering garbage'

Anurag Kashyap had recently picked RRR as his choice for India's entry at the Oscars and said that he hopes Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri-directed The Kashmir Files is not selected. An Indo-Canadian filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray had backed the Dobaaraa director and called Agnihotri's film 'hatemongering garbage'.

Taking to his Twitter handle, Dylan, while responding to Agnihotri's tweet on Kashyap's remark, wrote, "Yeah, actually it's (hatemongering, revisionist) garbage of no artistic merit and will be a further embarrassment to India if ‘selected’ by the ‘neutral’ board… Anurag Kashyap is just trying to preserve what’s left of the country’s good name." He later deleted his tweet.

Now, in a recent interview, Agnihotri has reacted strongly to Dylan's comment as he told ETimes, "This is all lobbying and politics. My political acumen is better than most filmmakers. Itna credit toh mujhe do (Please give me that much credit). I may not be a great filmmaker but I understand politics. Tell me, how did someone sitting in Canada notice my film? That means somebody is lobbying."

For the unversed, Dylan Mohan Gray directed an episode titled The King of Good Times, centered on Vijay Mallya, in the Netflix investigative documentary series Bad Boy Billionaires: India which had other two episodes on Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy's financial scandals.

The Kashmir Files has been one of the biggest blockbusters in Indian cinema this year as the hard-hitting political drama collected around Rs 340 crore at the box office worldwide. The film, featuring Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, and Pallavi Joshi among others, received mixed reviews from the audience and the critics.

READ | The Kashmir Files director Vivek Agnihotri picks R Madhavan's Rocketry as India's entry at Oscars

Meanwhile, in another interview, when the Buddha in a Traffic Jam director was asked to pick his choice for India's entry at the Oscars, he picked R Madhavan's Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, a biographical drama based on the life of Nambi Narayanan, an ISRO scientist who was falsely accused in an espionage case in 1994 and later declared innocent after two years.