Bringing the Kashmiri exodus on screen

Pallavi Joshi

Ahead of the release of The Kashmir Files in January 2022, Pallavi Joshi and director-husband Vivek Agnihotri are touring the US, hosting special screenings of the film. The actor, who recently won the National Award for Best Supporting Actor for her performance in The Tashkent Files, claims that the upcoming movie has received a positive response at the screenings. "There are two distinct responses to the film - some are feeling guilty that [the exodus] happened 30 years ago and they didn't do anything about it. Another section is feeling betrayed that the government and the media didn't let this story come out," says Joshi.

With The Kashmir Files that features Mithun Chakraborty and Anupam Kher, the director has traced the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits in 1990. While there may be polarising accounts of the circumstances of their departure, Joshi says their film has been designed after exhaustive video interviews of the first-generation victims. "In 2019, we visited the victims' families across the US, UK, Germany, Singapore and New Zealand. They shared their stories and incidents. Those incidents were then corroborated. What you see on the screen is what has happened," she asserts. The film was shot in Kashmir, Dehradun and Mussoorie.