Israeli envoy slams IFFI jury head, row escalates
NEW DELHI: Israeli ambassador Naor Gilon on Tuesday lashed out at Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who headed the jury at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) for describing “The Kashmir Files” as a “vulgar movie”, and said Lapid should apologise to his hosts in the country.
Lapid triggered a major controversy on Monday by describing “The Kashmir Files”, as “propaganda” and a “vulgar” film “inappropriate for an artistic, competitive section of such a prestigious film festival”.
Gilon criticised Lapid on Twitter, saying, “I feel ashamed and want to apologize to our hosts for the bad manner in which we repaid them for their generosity and friendship.”
NEW DELHI: A day after Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid criticised Hindi film ‘The Kashmir Files’ at IFFI, the country’s envoy to India Naor Gilon on Tuesday slammed him, saying he should be “ashamed” as he had “abused in the worst way” the Indian invitation to him to chair the panel of judges at the film festival.
Gilon’s remarks, in an open letter to Lapid, came after the jury head of the 53rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI) described ‘The Kashmir Files’ as “propaganda” and “vulgar”.
In his speech at the closing ceremony of IFFI 2022, Lapid said on Monday that he was “disturbed and shocked” to see the film being screened at the film festival. In the open letter put out in a series of tweets, Gilon said Lapid should be “ashamed” and gave reasons for it.
“In Indian culture they say that a guest is like God. You (Lapid) have abused in the worst way the Indian invitation to chair the panel of judges at @IFFIGoa as well as the trust, respect and warm hospitality they have bestowed on you.”
“As a son of a holocaust survivor, I was extremely hurt to see reactions in India to you that are doubting Schindler’s List, the Holocaust and worse. I unequivocally condemn such statements. There is no justification. It does show the sensitivity of the Kashmir issue here,” he said.
The envoy said Indian friends brought Fauda co-creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff in order to celebrate the love in India towards the Israeli series and Israel. “I suspect that this maybe also one of the reasons they invited you as an Israeli and me as the ambassador of Israel,” Gilon said.
“I understand your need in retrospect to ‘justify’ your behaviour but I can’t understand why you told (Israeli) Ynet news afterwards that the minister and I said on stage that there is similarity between our countries because ‘we fight a similar enemy and reside in a bad neighbourhood’,” Gilon said in his open letter to Lapid.
“We did speak about the similarities and closeness between our countries. The minister spoke about his visits to Israel, it being a Hi-Tech nation and the potential of combining this with the film industry. I spoke about the fact that we grew up watching Indian films,” the envoy said.
Gilon also said that Israelis should be humble when India, with such a great film culture, is consuming Israeli content.
“I’m no film expert but I do know that it’s insensitive and presumptuous to speak about historic events before deeply studying them and which are an open wound in India because many of the involved are still around and still paying a price,” the envoy said alluding to Lapid’s criticism of The Kashmir Files.
Citing an interview to Ynet by Lapid, Gilon said the connection the filmmaker makes between his criticism of The Kashmir Files and his dislike to what is happening in Israeli politics was quite evident. “My suggestion. As you vocally did in the past, feel free to use the liberty to sound your criticism of what you dislike in Israel but no need to reflect your frustration on other countries. I’m not sure that you have enough factual basis to make such comparisons,” he said.