The Kashmir Files' Pallavi Joshi says fatwa was issued against her and Vivek Agnihotri during shoot

Vivek Agnihotri's film The Kashmir Files wasn't an easy film to bring to the big screen. Actress-producer Pallavi Joshi recently revealed that a fatwa was issued against her and Vivek on the last day of shoot.

Vivek Agnihotri's directorial The Kashmir Files was released in the theatres on March 11. It wasn't easy to bring the film to the screens though. Vivek's wife and producer Pallavi Joshi (who also plays a key character in The Kashmir Files), revealed that a fatwa was issued against them during the last day of shooting. Starring Anupam Kher and Mithun Chakraborty, the film is set in 1990 during the Kashmir insurgency. It has brought forth the stories of lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits who had to leave behind everything they had in the Valley in 1990.

Even though The Kashmir Files was made on a small budget and had minimal promotions, the enthusiastic audiences are heavily impressed with the film. Speaking about the challenges faced while shooting the film, Pallavi Joshi told News18, "The shooting was the smallest part of our entire journey. The whole research, reaching out to people, getting money for the film, getting actors on board, everything was a massive challenge."

She further revealed that a fatwa was issued against her and husband Vivek Agnihotri on the last day of the film’s shooting in Kashmir. “The filming was the easiest part and probably the smallest part of it. In the four years that we dedicated to this film, shooting took only a month. The only thing that happened was when we were shooting in Kashmir, we received a fatwa issued on our names. When that happened, we were fortunately on our last scene. I told Vivek, ‘Let’s finish this scene quickly and head to the airport.’ We were leaving anyway, but I told him, ‘Let’s not say anything and finish the shoot right now.’ Because we wouldn’t get another chance to come back. So we finished that scene and I sent a few people to the hotel and said, ‘You guys start packing and put everything in the bag and get it to the sets and we’ll leave from there.’ That was the only challenge we faced while shooting," Pallavi said.

A fatwa is a legal opinion on a matter of Islamic law, practice or convention. Fatwa became a much-discussed word in 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued it to kill novelist Salman Rushdie for his Satanic verses, which allegedly insulted the Prophet.

The film tells the true story of brutal sufferings endured by Kashmiri Pandits in 1990, during the Kashmir insurgency. The Kashmir Files' cast features Anupam Kher as Pushkarnath, Mithun Chakraborty as Brahma Dutt, Darshan Kumar as Krishna Pandit, Pallavi Joshi as Radhika Menon, Bhasha Sumbali as Shraddha Pandit and Chinmay Mandlekar as Farooq Malik aka Bitta, among others. The film is bankrolled by Tej Narayan Agarwal, Abhishek Agarwal, Pallavi Joshi and Vivek Agnihotri under the Zee Studios, IAmBuddha and Abhishek Agarwal Arts banners.

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