Nadav Lapid gets support from fellow jury members on The Kashmir Files row

Three jury members, excluding the only Indian filmmaker on the panel, released a statement saying they agreed with Lapid’s comments on the movie

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid | Photo Credit: Facebook/@nadav.lapid

Three of Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s fellow jury members have come out in his support, posting a statement to this effect on Twitter.

Mr. Lapid had termed “vulgar” and “propaganda” the film The Kashmir Files, triggering a row at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa.

In a statement published early on Saturday morning, jury member Jinko Gotoh, an Oscar-nominated BAFTA winner, and two fellow jurors Pascale Chavance and Javier Angulo Barturen, stated that the entire jury knew and agreed with what Mr. Lapid said. “We stand by his statement.”

It further went on to clarify that the three 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. That was never the intention of the jury,” it added.

Sudipto Sen, the only Indian filmmaker on the IFFI International Competition jury who claimed that Mr. Lapid made the statement in his personal capacity, was not a signatory.

Following his comments on November 28, Mr. Lapid faced a backlash leading him to seek to clarify that he did not mean to deny the tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits, but had only commented on the movie’s “cinematic manipulations”, and that the tragedy “deserves a serious movie”.