Vivek Agnihotri on the problems they faced before shooting The Kashmir Files- "Had considered releasing the film on YouTube"

Vivek Agnihotri's directorial The Kashmir Files had released on March 11 on limited screens across India. The film which was made on a small budget also did not have massive promotions. However, the positive word-of-mouth publicity of the film attracted the audience to watch the film in theatres. Within a week of its release, the screen count for the film also increased by 8 times. The film has also collected nearly Rs. 100 crore in one week. The film that narrates the story of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits during the Kashmir Insurgency stars Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumaar, Pallavi Joshi, among others.

Recently, at a press conference celebrating the success of the film, Vivek Agnihotri spoke about the hurdles they faced before starting shooting The Kashmir Files. “A film begins with an idea. For the same, you need information and research. When Schindler's List was made on Jews, the makers had materials for the same. But in our case, there was no material. There was no FIR also, there was no research. There was no information after filing an RTI also. When asked the J&K govt they would give a rough number of 200-219. So that was a huge problem. An entire community was broken apart and had spread across the world. So to locate them and talk to them was a task," Vivek shared.

"Another problem was to find a financer. We had not even thought that we would make a feature film. We were okay with making a documentary or a web series. We had also considered releasing it on YouTube," he added.

Vivek Agnihotri’s earlier films include Tashkent Files, Hate Story, and Buddha in a Traffic Jam. The Kashmir Files is produced by Zee Studios.

ALSO READ: Vivek Agnihotri says he had reservations about making The Kashmir Files- “If we fail, no one will ever attempt to make a film on this topic for the next 100 years”