Ideas, not sparks, flew when Sudhir Mishra met Vivek Agnihotri

MUMBAI: In a Venn diagram, there would be little about filmmakers Vivek Agnihotri and Sudhir Mishra that would intersect. Both, at least their films and public pronouncements, represent opposing ends of the political spectrum. Agnihotri is known for films like Tashkent Files and the blockbuster Kashmir Files which can best be described as faction, and Mishra for his indie films like Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, Dharavi and Chameli.

But on May 1, the two directors met at Agnihotri’s studio in suburban Mumbai for a conversation to air grievances, discuss prejudice, and importantly, find common ground. At a time when another film, The Kerala Story, has polarised discourse, Agnihotri and Mishra’s conversation, they say, is the beginning of a civil dialogue.

It began with a tweet last week when Mishra who has a film coming up on the perils of disinformation and fake news called Afwah coming up for release tweeted this to his followers: “Liberals complain about Kashmir Files. Why? Vivek Agnihotri made a film and his audience came to theatres and saw it. But when we make films our audience who criticise Vivek sit on their a**e and don’t come to the theatre. Sorry, I had to say it.” Within a few hours the tweet had 626K views but it became a bigger talking point when Agnihotri responded with his own tweet: “Who is a liberal? Those who make films against terrorism or the ones who defend/ support terrorism through their art? Or ones who keep quiet? I think there should be an open debate on this but I don’t know if any liberal is ready for it. If you like I can do a podcast with you.”

Within 24 hours, Sudhir Mishra accepted the challenge and the two men got together for a conversation about “everything under the sun,” and which Agnihotri described as just two old friends, chatting without agenda.

As casual as the filmmakers make their tete-a-tete sound, as if players in a Jim Jarmusch vignette, it’s abundantly clear that there’s something much larger at play here.

Both Mishra and Agnihotri, makers of socially-conscious films, refer to themselves as open-minded. They may not agree on much, but they do share a mutual belief in the power of debate and dialogue—even if they come to it from very individual world views. “I am an Indian and we started the whole system of shastrarth,” Agnihotri emphasised. “It means you debate, dialogue and then you evolve from there; figure out bigger meanings of things. That’s my training, those are my values.”

Mishra’s incentive has more to do with a desire to continue believing in a less vitiated, more humane world, where the “magnificent diversity of this country that I so adore” is intact. “The whole environment is becoming one of “either-or”, which I find very odd — and I didn’t grow up in this world,” he said.

“Of course, we should take sides, we cannot understand everything either,” Mishra continued. “But there has to be some basic agreement: everyone’s right to live, justice, education; that we’ve vitiated the environment and need to work to rectify it; that there has to be affirmative action because people who’ve been exploited for generations need a leg up. Beyond that, we can debate and let the best woman win.”

So, what did they talk about? “You’ll have to watch the podcast to find out,” quipped Agnihotri. “Sometimes, when you meet after a long time, there can be lots of unexplained issues cooking in your mind because we live in a world of posturing. We don’t often understand who the real person is, beyond social media.”

Mishra was somewhat more precise. “We talked about his film and my film, how people have reacted to his films, how I’ve reacted to his films, the situation in the industry, our future plans,” he said, while mentioning film bans, nepotism in Bollywood, drug addiction, critics, holding a filmmaker like Karan Johar responsible for the cliquish nature of the Hindi film industry. “I think [Agnihotri] has been hurt by the perception that everyone in the industry has rejected him. But I think it’s more of a disagreement.”

Agnihotri had hovered on the periphery of the Hindi film industry, until he garnered attention first with Tashkent Files and then with his 2022 film Kashmir Files. The two films and his frankly political posts on social media also fortified his stance as a self-appointed spokesperson for the political dispensation in power.

Mishra, who doesn’t tweet as much but has his own political affiliations and comes from a political family—he is the grandson of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister DP Mishra—is sufficiently moved by the all-pervasive disinformation to want to make a film on it. “The idea is that a rumour can become the monster chasing you, leaving you no place to hide because it will always get there before you. It reckons with larger ideas of fact, confirmation bias, and the absurdity of it all.”

He agreed to the conversation with Vivek Agnihotri because he believes that the primary responsibility of the citizen is to be “engaged.”

“You have to get up and engage; watch films that aren’t about some feudal lord who’s past his prime asking to be titillated. You don’t have to like it, but you have to participate in the larger cultural dialogue.”