Actor and producer Pallavi Joshi is facing backlash for her upcoming film The Bengal Files, which is scheduled to hit theatres on September 5.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV's Shiv Aroor, she addressed the criticism and said she is open to a dialogue with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
When asked if she had reached out to Mamata Banerjee or the West Bengal government, she said, "We want to. I want to sit down across the table and have a dialogue with Mamata Banerjee. Yes, because I understand, you know, there could be some... I mean, she has a different political ideology and everything, but at the end of the day, she's an Indian. She's an Indian woman. She's a Bengali Indian woman. I'm sure her forefathers have gone through the same thing that we are showing in the film. Maybe they were, you know, in some way, maybe not victims, but in some way, they have witnessed the Direct Action Day or the Noakhali genocide."
She added, "The things that we've shown in the films are something that I'm sure are very close to her heart. So if she can just give us an audience, we're ready to show her the film, let her see the film and then decide, but on the basis of a trailer or on the basis of some past film for which she has some problem, she cannot ban a piece of work. She cannot curb freedom of expression," Joshi said.
Speaking about the origins of the project, she recalled how the idea developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said, "I had a very faint idea about what had happened. And being a keen reader, you know, I had read about a lot of things, and didn't really know how the dots joined until the research started coming up. So back in the day, in 2020, when we were about to go and start shooting for The Kashmir Files, the first wave of COVID hit us. And after that, when everyone was sitting home for seven, eight months doing nothing, that was the time we started with the research. We knew for certain that we wanted to make a movie on the partition."
She added, "And as the research started coming in, we also knew that Direct Action Day and Noakhali are going to be a part of it, because that is one side of our partition which nobody has seen. A lot of filmmakers have made films on Punjab partition. Books have been written on it. But the fact that Bengal was also divided and made into East Pakistan is something that is not in people's everyday memory, and therefore we wanted to visit that era also - to make people aware that our country was also divided on this side, and also because of the sheer tragic tales that were coming out of our research."
She explained how the subject took shape over time.
She shared, "Slowly and steadily as we gathered more information, we realised that this is a story which has to be told, because when we decided to make films on our democracy and our themes were going to be right to truth, right to justice and right to life, we realised that Bengal is that one place where there were boards like 'dogs and Indians not allowed,' so there was an absolute absence of dignity of life. People were killed in huge numbers, and yet those numbers also never came out. So whoever died was just a statistic. So much apathy for human life was found there during the partition. And then also, you know, after that, during the 78 years of our independence, as things panned out throughout the different governments that Bengal has seen and the illegal immigration that has been happening, we decided that there had to be some commentary on my state. Bengal is a part of my country."
Joshi added that the team behind the film wanted to highlight Bengal's history before it was too late. "Maybe we were late in making The Kashmir Files because we were in our 20s when the problem in Kashmir happened. So yes, we tried to make a film on Kashmir after the damage was done. But while the damage was not done, while we still can do something about it, why not make a film and make people aware that there is this issue that is burning there, and it is exactly like how it was during the partition? And we should take, you know, stand up, sit up, take cognisance of what is happening."
Background
The Bengal Files focuses on the turbulent history of Bengal during the 1940s, specifically the Great Calcutta Killings, Direct Action Day and the Noakhali riots.
The film stars Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumaar, Puneet Issar, Govind Namdev, Mohan Kapur, Palomi Ghosh, Divya Palat and others.
The Bengal Files is directed by Vivek Agnihotri and produced by Pallavi Joshi.
This is not the first time Agnihotri's films have faced political resistance. Previously, the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government had been accused of issuing gag orders against films on allegedly "flimsy" grounds.
The Bengal Files is regarded as the third installment in Vivek Agnihotri's 'Files' trilogy. The first film, The Tashkent Files (2019), dealt with the mystery behind the death of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, while the second, The Kashmir Files (2022), focused on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley.
Both films generated intense debate and political controversy, with The Kashmir Files becoming one of the most talked-about films of recent years.
With The Bengal Files, Agnihotri now turns his lens on Bengal's troubled past in the 1940s. The film is scheduled to release on September 5.
