Vivek Agnihotri claims we edited his 'facts are not facts’ retort. Thus proving facts are not facts to him

After a brief hiatus, the film Kashmir Files is back in the conversation, thanks to the New Yorker’s interview with director Vivek Agnihotri.

The interview, headlined “What a Disturbing New Film Reveals About Modi’s India”, notes how the Kashmir Files is “perfect propaganda” for India’s nationalists and is “missing vital historical context”.

But we would be lying if we said our interest in this interview had loftier motives. Agnihotri was asked by the New Yorker about his “facts are not facts” comment which he once made in an interview with us.

In response, the director said that his comments had been edited and decontextualised. “He edited it to his advantage to take the context out," Agnihotri claimed, referring to Newslaundry's Abhinandan Sekhri, who had interviewed him. "The complete sentence was ‘Facts are not facts if they’re coming from people like you.’ This was the complete sentence.”

Nope, it wasn't.

Here's the full interview. Subscribe to Newslaundry and watch it for yourself.

Still, we would have loved for Agnihotri to come and attempt the clarification in a follow-up interview with us, but he was busy being turned away by press clubs and holding “press conferences" at hotels. We did ask.

Coming back to the New Yorker piece, when the interviewer cited one of his tweets in which he said the same, Agnihotri declared, “I always tweet ‘facts are not facts’ if they’re coming from communists or Naxalites.”